Ukraine has asked its Western partners for help in modernizing air defense systems after what Mask this week launched an attack on the city of Dnipro with a hypersonic ballistic missile. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s statement on Friday, the improved system should be capable to defend the country against “new threats”. TASR informs about it based on the AFP report.
Russia claims that the Orešnik (hazel) missile is not a modernization of the old Soviet systems, while it is a rocket which no one else has and which with current defense systems cannot be shot down. According to experts, a hypersonic missile can be equipped nuclear warhead and at the same time can fly several thousand kilometers.
“The Ukrainian Minister of Defense (Rustem Umerov) is already negotiating with our partners about new air defense systems, that can protect lives from new threats,” said Zelensky in a video published on social networks. Zelenskyi also called on China, a key ally of Moscow, to responded to the use of a new missile. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “all parties should remain calm and exercise restraint”writes AFP.
In his evening speech, the Ukrainian president said that “Russia is mocking the stance of China and the states of the Global South, as well as some world leaders who are calling for restraint”. In his words, “the world must sound serious in its reaction so that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin he really feared the expansion of the war and felt the real consequences of his actions”.
The launch of a Russian hypersonic missile represents the last significant escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. At the beginning of the week, Kyiv fired on Russian territory the first long-range missiles supplied to him by Britain and the USA.
