Ukraine says new Russian missile reached speed of over 13,000 kph

KYIV (Reuters) -The Russian missile that struck the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday reached a top speed of more than 13,000 kph (8,000 mph) and took about 15 minutes to reach its target from its launch, Ukraine said on Friday in its first public assessment of the new weapon.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new intermediate-range, hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik” as a warning to the West against supporting Ukraine’s war effort.

The attack took place with fighting in the war nearing the three-year mark and Ukraine firing longer-range missiles supplied by its Western allies at targets inside Russia.

“The flight time of this Russian missile from the moment of its launch in the Astrakhan region to its impact in the city of Dnipro was 15 minutes,” the military’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said in a statement.

“The missile was equipped with six warheads: each equipped with six submunitions. The speed at the final part of the trajectory was over Mach 11.”

Mach is a measurement of supersonic speed. Mach 11 equals about 13,600 kph.

HUR added that the weapon was likely to be from the Kedr missile complex, which deputy head Vadym Skibitsky told Ukrainian media is related to the Oreshnik system and was first tested in June 2021.

Skibitsky said Russia could have at least 10 more such missiles to test before they enter mass production, news agency Ukrinform reported.

Kyiv initially suggested Russia had fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, but U.S. officials and NATO echoed Putin’s description of the weapon as an intermediate-range ballistic missile.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry on Thursday urged the international community to react swiftly to the strike.

NATO will hold an emergency meeting with Ukraine at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss Moscow’s strike, a NATO source said on Friday.

(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Toby Chopra, Jon Boyle and Angus MacSwan)

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