Putin closes airspace for three days above ‘unstoppable’ ballistic missile test site

Days aft staging their largest ever drone onslaught connected Kyiv, Russia has closed airspace for 3 days astir a investigating tract for its ‘unstoppable’ hypersonic ballistic Oreshnik missile.

Moscow issued a announcement to airmen and unopen the airspace ‘from crushed level to unlimited altitude’ from 4am contiguous until 8pm connected November 30.

Last week, Putin ordered the motorboat of Oreshnik warheads without explosives, which deed a defence works successful Dnipro, Ukraine.

The “test” firing appears to person been a warning, but the adjacent 1 could see unrecorded warheads with antithetic results.

It is unclear if Vladimir Putin is readying a caller Oreshnik motorboat successful effect to usage of British and US supplied missiles by Ukraine to deed targets connected Russian territory.

The airspace supra Kapustin Yar rocket trial tract successful the Astrakhan portion is utilized for investigating galore antithetic types of missiles, astir notably the Oreshnik.

The nuclear-capable Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic rocket which travels astatine speeds supra Mach 10 – successful excess of 12,300km/hour.

The Russian defence ministry has indicated it is preparing ‘countermeasures’ aft US-supplied ATACMS rocket strikes connected an airfield successful Russian territory.

‘The Ministry of Defense is intimately monitoring the concern and preparing countermeasures,’ said a statement.

Moscow claimed to person changeable down astir of the ATACMS missiles, and showed debris of the American agelong scope rockets.

The determination prompted the Russian ambassador to the UK to pass that using western-made missiles is dragging Britain into the conflict.

Andrei Kelin commented aft UK-made Storm Shadow missiles were besides precocious used: ‘The UK is present straight progressive successful this war, due to the fact that this firing cannot hap without NATO staff, British unit arsenic well.

‘The US administration, supported by France and the UK, has made a deliberate determination to marque these strikes, which earnestly escalates the situation, and it tin bring a collision betwixt the atomic powers.’

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