(Reuters) – Ukraine’s parliament has postponed a sitting due to have taken place on Friday out of security concerns, public broadcaster Suspilne reported on Thursday, quoting sources.
“On 22nd November, plans called for a session of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), which included questions to the government, but this was cancelled for reasons of potential security issues,” Suspilne said.
It said the order told members to keep their families out of Kyiv’s government district and quoted parliamentarians as saying that, for the moment, the next sitting was not scheduled until December.
The postponement occurred after Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin said Russia had struck the central city of Dnipro with a new medium-range hypersonic missile in response to Ukrainian use of Western missiles on targets in Russia.
Putin suggested more could follow “in case of escalation of aggressive actions”.
Warnings of large-scale missile attacks prompted the U.S. and other embassies to close for the day on Wednesday.
One opposition member of parliament, Oleksiy Honcharenko, expressed frustration at the cancellation in a post on the Telegram messaging app, saying an opportunity to put questions to the government had been lost.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Bogdan Kochubey; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)