Putin bombards Kiev with 15,000km/h ‘Dagger’ hypersonic missiles, just hours before NATO chiefs arrive for historic visit
VLADIMIR Putin has blasted Kiev with “Dagger” hypersonic missiles traveling at a speed of 15,000 km per hour, just hours before NATO chiefs were due to visit.
Russia He is believed to have fired 31 ballistic and cruise missiles before dawn on Thursday, marking their first attack on the United States Ukrainian capital in six weeks.
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It is claimed that two ballistic missiles and 29 cruise missiles made up the numbers after that Putin has vowed retaliation for escalating attacks on Russia’s border regions.
were among them supersonic missiles known as “The Dagger”.“, a £4.5 million remote-controlled weapon that can travel twelve times the speed of sound.
Moscow previously claimed that the deadly ‘Kinzhal’ missiles, as they are also known, cannot be stopped by Western missile defense systems.
With a range of 2,000 kilometers, Putin himself once called them ‘an ideal weapon’.
However, Ukrainian air defenses managed to shoot down all incoming missiles, although 13 people, including a child, were injured by falling debris.
It was not the first time that Putin was so humiliated, after Ukraine previously claimed its six ‘unstoppable’ Kinzhal missiles in May last year.
Yet the inhabitants of Kiev were awakened around 5 a.m. by loud explosions as the rockets arrived from different directions at about the same time, said Serhii Popko, head of Kyiv’s city administration.
An 11-year-old girl and a 38-year-old man have been hospitalized in Kiev, city authorities said.
Eight other people suffered minor injuries, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Ukraine’s emergency services said about 80 people had been evacuated from their homes.
Falling debris from the intercepted rockets set fire to at least one apartment building, burned parked cars and left craters in streets and a small park.
Some streets were littered with debris, including glass from broken windows.
On Wednesday, President Putin threatened to respond in kind to Ukrainian airstrikes on Russia’s Belgorod region, near the border with Ukraine, in recent days.
During a meeting in the Kremlin, Putin said that Russia can respond in the same way with regard to civilian infrastructure and all other similar objects that the enemy attacks.
“We have our own views on this issue and our own plans. We will follow what we have outlined,” he said.
Kiev has better air defenses than most regions of the country, so the number of missile interceptions is often high.
As a result, Russian attacks on the capital are significantly less successful than during the first days of the war.
Still, Ukrainian officials warn they will need significantly more Western weapons if they are to overcome Russia’s invasion.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky urged the country’s Western partners to send more air defense systems so they can be spread across the country, where missile attacks have become increasingly common.
“Every day, every night such terror happens,” he said in Telegram after Thursday’s attack on Kiev. “World unity is able to stop this by helping us with more air defense systems.”
Zelensky said Russia does not have missiles that can evade US-made Patriots and other advanced air defense weapons.
Survivors of the attack, some of them in tears and visibly shaken as emergency workers treated them on the street, said they narrowly escaped.
Raisa Kozenko, a 71-year-old whose apartment lost doors and windows in the blast, said her son jumped out of bed just in time.
“He was covered in blood, in the rubble,” she said, shaking with fear. “And all I can say is… the apartment is completely destroyed.”
Mariia Margulis, 31, said a decision to stay in the hallway during the attack saved her family.
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“The blast wave blew out all the windows on the side where everything happened,” she said. “My mother was supposed to sleep in that room, but I asked her to move to the hallway in time, which saved us.”
The attack took place hours after the president’s visit to Kiev Joe Biden’s top foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan said he could not predict when much-needed aid from Washington would be approved.
“I’m not going to make any predictions about when exactly this will happen, but we are working to get it done as soon as possible… but I can’t make any specific prediction today,” he told reporters.
The strike also happened to take place a few hours before the visit NATO chef Rob Bauer.
The chairman of the NATO Military Committee had flown in to meet with Ukrainian political and military leaders.
“My arrival is the first NATO military delegation to visit Ukraine since the large-scale invasion and is proof that NATO and Ukraine are closer than ever,” he said. Pravda report.
“Every day we get closer, we become more compatible. Together we will do everything we can to ensure that Ukraine becomes a member of our alliance.
“The Swedish flag will not be the only blue and yellow flag at NATO headquarters.”
European Union leaders also considered new ways to help boost arms and ammunition production for Ukraine at a summit in Ukraine Brussels on Thursday.
Russia has largely focused its attention on other Ukrainian cities of late, targeting them with drones and ballistic missiles.
On Wednesday, ballistic missiles killed five people and injured nine in the eastern Kharkov region, while attacks on southern Odesa killed 21 people last week.
Yet Russia was humiliated even further when anti-Putin partisans ambushed soldiers before taking out elite Spetsnaz commandos with drones on Thursday.
The daring attack took place in Kozinka, a rural town in Belgorod Oblast, where Russian troops hid in a residential building after being surrounded.
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