Russia used the powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile during a mass drone and missile attack on Kyiv on Sunday that killed at least two people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday, marking the third time the weapon has been used in the four-year war.
The intense aerial assault damaged buildings across the Ukrainian capital, including near government offices, residential buildings, schools and a market, Ukrainian authorities said. At least 83 people were wounded in the attack.
Air raid sirens blared through the night as smoke billowed across the city from strikes. Associated Press reporters heard powerful explosions near the city center and close to government buildings.
The attack included 600 strike drones and 90 air, sea and ground-launched missiles, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. Ukrainian air defenses destroyed and jammed 549 drones and 55 missiles. Around 19 missiles failed to reach targets, the Air Force said.
Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s foreign minister, reported that the residence of the Albanian ambassador to Ukraine was hit during the attack, denouncing it as “unacceptable” and a “grave escalation”.
The Oreshnik, which is capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads, struck the city of Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region, Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
Russia had vowed to strike back for an attack Friday
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday confirmed the weapon’s use, as well as other missile types, to strike Ukrainian “military command and control facilities,” air bases and military industrial enterprises. The ministry added the attack was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on “civilian facilities on Russian territory,” without giving detail.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday denounced a drone strike on a college dormitory in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, which Moscow blamed on Kyiv. He said there were no military or law enforcement facilities near the college. Putin said he ordered the Russian military to retaliate.
The death toll from that strike had risen to 21, Russian authorities said late Saturday. They said 42 other people had been wounded in the attack the previous night. The Kremlin-installed authorities of the Luhansk region announced two days of mourning for the victims.
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At a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on the strike, held at the request of Russia, Ukrainian Ambassador Andrii Melnyk denied his Russian counterpart’s accusations of war crimes, calling them a “pure propaganda show” and asserting that the May 22 operations “exclusively targeted the Russian war machine.”
Kyiv’s European allies, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, condemned the Russian strikes and use of the Oreshnik in statements published on Sunday. Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said top diplomats from EU states will meet within days to “discuss how to dial up the international pressure on Russia.”
Ukraine struggles to down all ballistic missiles
Zelenskyy said not all the ballistic missiles were intercepted and that most of the strikes hit Kyiv, the primary target of the attack.
The apparent interception failures underscored Ukraine’s chronic shortage of air defense missiles capable of downing ballistic missiles. Kyiv relies heavily on U.S. Patriot air defense systems to intercept such weapons, but interceptors remain in short supply and are among Ukraine’s most urgent requests to its Western partners.
Developing a domestically produced alternative has become a top priority for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, though doing so will require time and funding.
Fires rage into the morning in Kyiv after attack
Damage was recorded in 50 locations across several districts of the capital, including residential buildings, shopping centers and schools, Ukraine’s emergency service said in a Telegram post. Police department buildings were also damaged, it said.
Fires continued to rage into the morning, complicating rescue efforts as buildings collapsed from the blasts.
“It was a terrible night, and there had never been anything like it in the entire war,” said Kyiv resident Svitlana Onofryichuk, 55, who had worked in the market that was damaged for 22 years.
“I am very sorry that I have to say goodbye to Kyiv now, I am not staying there anymore, there is no possibility,” she added. “My job is gone, everything is gone, everything has burned down.”
Yevhen Zosin, 74, a Kyiv resident who witnessed the attack, said the moment he heard the explosion he rushed to grab his dog.
“Then there was another explosion and she and I were thrown back like a pin by the shock wave. We both survived, she and I. My apartment was blown to pieces,” he said.
In Kyiv’s Shevchenko district, a five-story residential building was hit, which caused a fire, and one person was killed, Ukraine’s state emergency service reported.
A school building was damaged by an attack while people sheltered inside, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Local authorities reported supermarkets and warehouses across the city also were damaged.
Multiple communities recorded damage throughout the Kyiv region, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, who heads the regional administration.
Elsewhere, a Ukrainian drone killed a civilian in the Russian town of Grayvoron, in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, local authorities reported on Sunday morning.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down or jammed 33 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday, including over the Moscow region, western and southwestern Russia, and Russian-occupied Crimea.
—Associated Press writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
