Moscow:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday he hopes the West takes Moscow’s recent use of a hypersonic missile in Ukraine “seriously,” warning that Russia was prepared to use “all means” to defend itself.
The United States and its allies “must understand that we are ready to use all possible means to prevent them from succeeding in what they call a strategic defeat of Russia,” Lavrov said in an interview with American media personality Tucker Carlson released on Thursday.
Two weeks ago, Russia fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, in a major escalation of the nearly three-year war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has since threatened to use the weapon on Kiev in response to Ukraine’s attacks on Russian territory.
“We are sending signals and we hope that the last one, a few weeks ago, the signal with the new weapon system called Oreshnik… was taken seriously,” Lavrov said.
While insisting that Russia does not want to escalate the situation and avoid “any misunderstanding” with Washington and its partners, Lavrov warned that “we will send additional messages if they do not draw the necessary conclusions.”
Putin said the Oreshnik missile flies ten times the speed of sound and cannot be intercepted by air defenses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the attack “the latest bout of Russian madness” and called for updated air defense systems to counter the new threat.
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