Ukraine Cancels Parliament Session, Citing a Warning Over a Missile Attack

 

"This is the first time Parliament has canceled a session since events in Ukraine started.

Ukraine’s Parliament canceled a session on Friday over a warning that Russia could target the building in an attack with a missile that Ukraine’s air defenses cannot shoot down, lawmakers said.

Although they did not say which type of missile they were worried about, the decision to cancel the session came a day after Russia fired what it described as a new, intermediate-range missile. Ukraine has no radars capable of detecting those missiles in flight through the upper atmosphere, nor air defense systems capable of shooting them down, Ukrainian experts have said.

Since the start of the conflict, Parliament has continued meeting in its chambers, even in the first months of the conflict, when Russian forces were just 12 miles from the center of the capital. But on Friday, Parliament decided not to take the risk.

“They canceled it late last night, citing the danger of a missile strike,” Oleksiy Honcharenko, an opposition member of Parliament, said of the planned session.

The intermediate-range missile launched Thursday carried conventional warheads, but it is also capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and analysts and Western officials said the purpose was to instill fear in Ukraine and the West.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Thursday said his forces used the missile in response to Ukraine’s using American and British weapons in strikes further into Russia.

On Friday, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency released a statement with new details about the missile’s payload and its speed. On its approach, the agency said, the missile was flying at 11 times the speed of sound and released six warheads that each deployed six submunitions that struck the ground. From the time the missile was launched in the Astrakhan region of Russia it took 15 minutes to hit Dnipro, the agency said.

With Thursday’s missile attack, a new wave of worry has gripped Ukraine, already unnerved by Russia’s continual strikes on Ukrainian military complex and its daily advances at the front line.” [1]

Landsbergis' family didn't respond to questions from the press about how they are preparing to protect Lithuania from such missiles. They think to let all Lithuanian tanks and a Lithuanian division to fly at 100 times the speed of sound.They want to ask the physics lab assistant A. Kubilius if this is possible. Elderly A. Kubilius is sleeping at the moment.

 1. Ukraine Cancels Parliament Session, Citing a Warning Over a Missile Attack. Varenikova, Maria.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Nov 22, 2024.