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Putin to Travel to Kyrgyzstan in First Known Trip abroad since ICC Arrest Warrant

This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Russian President Vladimir Putin attending a meeting with Culture Minister at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 9, 2023. (Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP)
This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Russian President Vladimir Putin attending a meeting with Culture Minister at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 9, 2023. (Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP)
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Putin to Travel to Kyrgyzstan in First Known Trip abroad since ICC Arrest Warrant

This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Russian President Vladimir Putin attending a meeting with Culture Minister at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 9, 2023. (Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP)
This pool photograph distributed by Russian state owned agency Sputnik shows Russian President Vladimir Putin attending a meeting with Culture Minister at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 9, 2023. (Photo by Mikhail METZEL / POOL / AFP)

Vladimir Putin will visit Kyrgyzstan on Thursday, the presidential office of the Central Asian country said, in what would be the Russian leader's first known trip abroad since the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest.
Putin has rarely traveled abroad since the start of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and is not known to have left Russia since the ICC issued in March a warrant for him on suspicion of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. The Kremlin denies those allegations, Reuters said.
"At the invitation of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, Sadyr Japarov, on October 12 of this year, the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, will make an official visit to the country," the Kyrgyz presidential administration said in a statement on its website.
Putin agreed in May during talks with Japarov to visit Kyrgyzstan, but there has been no official confirmation yet from the Kremlin that the Russian president will travel there on Thursday.
The Russian leader is also due to travel to China next week for the third Belt and Road Forum in Beijing. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor China are members of the ICC, which was established to prosecute war crimes.
Moscow denies the ICC allegations and the Kremlin said the warrant was evidence of the West's hostility to Russia, which opened a criminal case against the ICC prosecutor and the judges who issued the warrant.
CIS SUMMIT
In Kyrgyzstan, Putin is also to take part in ceremonies dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the opening of an air base in Kant, which is home to the Russian Aerospace Forces' 999th Air Base, the Kyrgyz presidential office said.
Separately, Kyrgyzstan's presidential office said on Tuesday that the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan told Japarov that he will not be attending a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit in Bishkek on Friday.
The office said that Pashinyan told Japarov in a phone call that he will not be able to attend due to "a number of circumstances."
The CIS was formed among a number of the post-Soviet republics after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and includes Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, among others.
Japarov's office said Putin planned to attend the summit.
Russia-Armenia ties have been badly strained by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and Armenia moving to subject itself to the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Armenia has also accused Russia of inaction as Armenia's neighbor Azerbaijan recaptured last month Nagorno-Karabakh, a region controlled for three decades by ethnic Armenians, most of whom have now fled.
Last week, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev pulled out of an EU-brokered meeting with Pashinyan at which Brussels said it was standing by Armenia.
Pashinyan said on Tuesday that plans were proceeding for a meeting with the Azeri president to discuss a durable peace accord.

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NATO and Ukraine to Hold Emergency Talks after Russia’s Attack with New Hypersonic Missile

A missile shrapnel lies on the grass in front of damaged rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, following a Russian attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, on November 22, 2024. (AFP)
A missile shrapnel lies on the grass in front of damaged rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, following a Russian attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, on November 22, 2024. (AFP)
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NATO and Ukraine to Hold Emergency Talks after Russia’s Attack with New Hypersonic Missile

A missile shrapnel lies on the grass in front of damaged rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, following a Russian attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, on November 22, 2024. (AFP)
A missile shrapnel lies on the grass in front of damaged rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, following a Russian attack in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, on November 22, 2024. (AFP)

NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked a central city with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war.

The conflict is “entering a decisive phase,” Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday, and “taking on very dramatic dimensions.”

Ukraine’s parliament canceled a session as security was tightened following Thursday's Russian strike on a military facility in the city of Dnipro.

In a stark warning to the West, President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech to his nation that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was retaliation for Kyiv’s use of US and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Putin said Western air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov kept up Russia's bellicose tone on Friday, blaming “the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries” in supplying weapons to Ukraine to strike Russia.

"The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities, and the contours of further retaliatory actions in the event that our concerns were not taken into account have also been quite clearly outlined," he said.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, widely seen as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin in the European Union, echoed Moscow's talking points, suggesting the use of US-supplied weapons in Ukraine likely requires direct American involvement.

“These are rockets that are fired and then guided to a target via an electronic system, which requires the world’s most advanced technology and satellite communications capability,” Orban said on state radio. “There is a strong assumption ... that these missiles cannot be guided without the assistance of American personnel.”

Orban cautioned against underestimating Russia’s responses, emphasizing that the country’s recent modifications to its nuclear deployment doctrine should not be dismissed as a “bluff.” “It’s not a trick... there will be consequences,” he said.

Separately in Kyiv, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský called Thursday's missile strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe.”

At a news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Lipavský also expressed his full support for delivering the necessary additional air defense systems to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks.”

He underlined that the Czech Republic will impose no limits on the use of its weapons and equipment given to Ukraine.

Three lawmakers from Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, confirmed that Friday's previously scheduled session was called off due to the ongoing threat of Russian missiles targeting government buildings in central Kyiv.

In addition, there also was a recommendation to limit the work of all commercial offices and nongovernmental organizations "in that perimeter, and local residents were warned of the increased threat,” said lawmaker Mykyta Poturaiev, who added this is not the first time such a threat has been received.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures, a spokesperson said.

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate said the Oreshnik missile, whose name in Russian means “hazelnut tree,” was fired from the Kapustin Yar 4th Missile Test Range in Russia’s Astrakhan region, and flew 15 minutes before striking Dnipro. The missile had six nonnuclear warheads each carrying six submunitions and reached a spoeed of Mach 11, it said.

Test launches of a similar missile were conducted in October 2023 and June 2024, the directorate said. The Pentagon confirmed the missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile.

Thursday's attack struck the Pivdenmash plant that built ICBMs when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The military facility is located about 4 miles (6 1/2 kilometers) southwest of the center of Dnipro, a city of about 1 million that is Ukraine’s fourth-largest and a key hub for military supplies and humanitarian aid, and is home to one of the country’s largest hospitals for treating wounded soldiers from the front before their transfer to Kyiv or abroad.

The stricken area was cordoned off and out of public view. With no fatalities reported from the attack, Dnipro residents resorted to dark humor on social media, mostly focused on the missile’s name, Oreshnik.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia struck a residential district of Sumy overnight with Iranian-designed Shahed drones, killing two people and injuring 13, the regional administration said..

Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the drones were stuffed with shrapnel elements. “These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects,” said Artiukh, according to Suspilne.