NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked a central city with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile.

Russia's use of what President Vladmir Putin said was a new intermediate-range missile against Ukraine was all about signaling -- "a political strike not a military one," as one analyst put it. Here's what Putin was probably hoping to achieve.

Ukraine's air force said on Thursday that Russia launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which are designed to deliver nuclear warheads, at targets in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. But…