PM Tusk: the risk of global conflict is real

"The war in the east is entering a decisive phase, we feel that the unknown is approaching," Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a teachers conference on Friday (November 22).

"The conflict is taking on dramatic proportions. The last few dozen hours have shown that the threat is serious and real when it comes to global conflict."

The prime minister also emphasized the importance of the daily work of teachers. "There is no place like a school where we can prepare young people for resilience in the face of such historical events, in all their various dimensions," he said.

He added that there is no national security without education. "The quality of teaching and what happens daily in Polish schools will determine whether we will be safe in 5 or 10 years."

Tusk stressed that safe, strong, and resilient nations are those with technological, intellectual, and creative superiority.

Poland, which borders Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, has been a leading voice calling for members of NATO to spend more on defence, and is itself allocating 4.7% of gross domestic product to boosting its armed forces in 2025.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the strike was a response to the U.S. and UK allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, a move he said had given the conflict "elements of a global character".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the Russian missile strike another escalation after deployment of North Korean troops on Russian soil.

The Russian missile that struck the Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Thursday flew for 15 minutes and reached a maximum speed of beyond Mach 11, Kyiv's top spy agency said on Friday.

"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 Main Directorate of Intelligence said in a statement, adding that the weapon was "likely from the 'Kedr' missile complex.

"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."

The Kremlin said on Friday that a strike on Ukraine using a newly developed hypersonic ballistic missile was designed as a message to the West that Moscow will respond to their "reckless" decisions and actions in support of Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a day after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had fired the new missile - the Oreshnik or Hazel Tree - at a Ukrainian military facility.

"The main message is that the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries that produce missiles, supply them to Ukraine and subsequently participate in strikes on Russian territory cannot remain without a reaction from the Russian side," Peskov told reporters.

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

Peskov said Russia had not been obliged to warn the United States about the strike, but had informed the U.S. 30 minutes before the launch anyway.

President Vladimir Putin remained open to dialogue, Peskov said, but he said the outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden "prefers to continue down the path of escalation".

Russia said on Thursday that a new U.S. ballistic missile defence base in northern Poland will lead to an increase in the overall level of nuclear danger, but Warsaw said "threats" from Moscow only strengthened the argument for NATO defences.

NATO will hold an emergency meeting with Ukraine at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss Moscow's use of a hypersonic intermediate-range missile in its war on Kyiv, a NATO source said on Friday.

The western military alliance confirmed that the NATO Ukraine Council, grouping allies' NATO ambassadors and their Ukrainian counterpart, will convene at Kyiv's request but did not give any detail on the topic of discussions.