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Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a massive overnight offensive that officials said killed at least four people on Friday. For only the second time, it used a new ballistic missile that it says can fly at 10 times the speed of sound and is unstoppable.
The uproar and launch of the nuclear-capable Oryshnik missile comes days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress in agreeing how to defend the country from further Moscow attacks if a peace deal is reached to end a four-year-old Russian invasion.
Months of US-led peace efforts have failed to end the fighting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said during his talks with the Washington delegation that they have made significant progress on the peace agreement. But Moscow has not given any public sign that it is willing to back down from its demands.
Four people were killed and at least 22 wounded in an overnight attack in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, Ukrainian officials said.
Timur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, said the dead included an emergency medical assistant. The Security Service of Ukraine said five rescue workers were injured while responding to the attack.
The attack damaged the Qatari embassy in Kiev, Zelensky said on Friday. He pointed out that Qatar played a key role in mediating the exchange of prisoners of war.
He asked for a “clear response” from the international community, especially the United States, which Russia takes seriously.
The attack comes after Russia condemned the seizure of a US oil tanker in the North Atlantic amid a fresh standoff between Moscow and Washington.
Oreshnik injured in Lviv: reports
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack was retaliation for last month’s attack by Ukrainian drones on the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukraine and US President Donald Trump have denied Russia’s claims of an attack on Putin’s residence.
Putin has previously said that the Oreshnik will launch a Mach 10 “like a meteorite” into its target and is independent of any anti-missile defense system. Putin has warned the West that Russia could use the Oreshnik against Kiev’s allies, whose long-range missiles allow them to strike inside Russia, saying that many of those used for conventional strikes could cause as much damage as a nuclear attack.
A US intelligence review found that Ukraine was not responsible for the Russian drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s residence. Both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky held end-of-the-year news conferences where talks on the peace deal were held on non-key issues.
According to Ukrainian information, the missile has six warheads, each carrying 6 warheads.
Russia did not say where the Oreshnik had landed, but Russian media and military bloggers said it was targeting a huge underground natural gas storage facility in Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Foreign military aid to Ukraine is believed to pass through the Polish border.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiha said that Ukraine will initiate international measures to respond to the use of missiles, including an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council and a meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council.
“Such a strike near the borders of the European Union and NATO is a serious threat to the security of the European continent and a challenge to the Atlantic community. We demand a strong response to Russia’s careless actions,” he said on X.
Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi said Russia had hit critical infrastructure with ballistic missiles, but did not give details. He said the missile traveled at a speed of 13,000 kilometers per hour – which would take place around March 10 – and that a special type of rocket was being investigated.
In the year November 2024 Russia uses Orshnik missile for the first time in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Analysts say Russia will fear new psychological warfare, unruly Ukrainians and Western arms suppliers to Ukraine.
‘People really want peace’: Dnipro resident
Several districts of Kyiv were hit by the attack, said Tekachenko of the city’s military administration. A drone crashed on the roof of a multi-storey building in the Desniansky district. At another address in the same district, the first two floors of a residential building were damaged.
A multi-storey building was damaged and caught fire by a drone in the Dnipro region.
Dmytro Karpenko’s windows were broken during the attack on Kiev. When he saw that his neighbor’s house was on fire, he went out to help him.
“What Russia is doing shows that they don’t want peace. But people really want peace, people are suffering, people are dying,” said Karpenko, 45.
As a result of the attack, water and electricity services were cut off in the capital, Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said.
The attack came just hours after Zelensky warned the public that Russia was planning a large-scale attack. He said that Russia took advantage of the cold weather in the capital to freeze the streets and roads.