Ukraine’s parliament has cancelled a session after Russia deployed a new ballistic missile that threatens to escalate the nearly three-year war.
Three Ukrainian legislators confirmed that the parliamentary session previously scheduled was cancelled on Friday due to the ongoing threat of Russian missile attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures, a spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, Nato and Ukraine will hold emergency talks next Tuesday, the alliance said, following a request from Ukraine.
Today, Putin admitted to taking a second step this year toward escalating and expanding this war. A new ballistic missile was used. Putin struck our city of Dnipro, one of Ukraine’s largest cities. This is a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war—a…
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 21, 2024
The meeting will be held at the level of ambassadors and will most likely address the new missile threat.
Russian troops also struck Sumy with Shahed drones overnight, killing two people and injuring 12 more, the regional administration said on Friday morning. The attack targeted a residential district of the city.
Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the Russians used Shaheds stuffed with shrapnel elements for the first time in the region.
“These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects,” Mr Artiukh said, according to Suspilne.
Separately, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky arrived on a visit to Kyiv. He posted a photo from Kyiv’s railway station on his X account Friday morning.
“I am interested in how the Ukrainians are coping with the bombings, how Czech projects are working on the ground and how to better target international aid in the coming months. I will discuss all of this here,” he wrote.
On the suspension of business in parliament, legislator Mykyta Poturaiev said is not the first time such a threat has been received.
Not only is the parliament closed, “there was also recommendation to limit the work of all commercial offices and NGOs that remain in that perimeter, and local residents were warned of the increased threat”, he said.
On Thursday, Russia fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
The missile struck a missile factory in Dnipro in central Ukraine.
Mr Putin warned that US air defence systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said flies at 10 times the speed of sound and which he called Oreshnik – Russian for hazelnut tree.
The Pentagon confirmed that Russia’s missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.
