Ukrainian President Sindir Putin Challenges West Orestnik Missile Duel: Is He Waras?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy/screenshot via Instagram @zelenskyy_official

JAKARTA - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky satirized the missile duel challenge presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin to the West.

"Do you think he's a sane person?" Zelensky said.

This comment was made at Putin's challenge to test air defenses by launching Russia's new Orestnik hypersonic ballistic missile on target in Ukraine.

Putin challenged the West to intercept a previously claimed Russian-owned missile that no one was capable of intercepting it during an annual press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

"Let them contact us and those in the West as well as the US pay for their analysis to conduct a kind of technology experiment and conduct a 21st century-style high-tech duel," President Putin said, quoted by TASS.

Let them select targets, for example, in Kyiv and collect their air defense systems and missiles there, while we will launch the Orestnik missile to that target. We'll see what happens. We're ready for such experiments," Putin explained.

Russia fired the Orestnik missile for the first time on November 21, hitting a military target in Dnipro, Ukraine after the United States and Britain allowed Kyiv to use Western weapons to strike deep into Russian territory.

"There is no way to counter the missile at this time. Oreshnik hit the target at Mach 10, or 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second," President Putin said last month.