Russia used the powerful Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile during a massive drone and missile attack on kyiv on Sunday that killed at least two people, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, marking the third time the weapon has been used in the four-year war.
The intense airstrike damaged buildings throughout the Ukrainian capital, including near government offices, residential buildings, schools and a market, Ukrainian authorities said. At least 83 people were injured in the attack.
Air raid sirens sounded throughout the night as smoke from the attacks rose throughout the city. Associated Press journalists heard powerful explosions near the city center and near government buildings.
The attack included 600 attack drones and 90 missiles launched from air, sea and land, according to the Ukrainian Air Force. Ukrainian air defenses destroyed and jammed 549 drones and 55 missiles. About 19 missiles failed to hit their 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 “serious escalation.”
The Oreshnik, which is capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads, attacked the city of Bila Tserkva in the kyiv region, Zelenskyy said on Telegram.
Russia had promised to retaliate for an attack on Friday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday confirmed the use of the weapon, as well as other types of missiles, to attack “military command and control facilities,” air bases and military industrial enterprises in Ukraine. The ministry added that the attack was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on “civilian facilities on Russian territory,” without giving details.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday denounced a drone attack on a university residence in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, which Moscow blamed on kyiv. He said there were no military or police facilities near the university. Putin said he ordered the Russian military to retaliate.
The death toll from that attack had risen to 21, Russian authorities said Saturday night. They said another 42 people had been injured in the previous night’s attack. Kremlin-installed authorities in the Luhansk region announced two days of mourning for the victims.
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At an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the attack, held at the request of Russia, Ukrainian ambassador Andrii Melnyk denied his Russian counterpart’s war crimes allegations, calling them “pure propaganda spectacle” and stating that the May 22 operations “targeted exclusively the Russian war machine.”
kyiv’s European allies, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz, condemned the Russian attacks and the 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 increase international pressure on Russia.”
Ukraine struggles to shoot down all ballistic missiles
Zelenskyy said that not all ballistic missiles were intercepted and that most of the strikes hit kyiv, the main target of the attack.
The apparent interception failures underscored Ukraine’s chronic shortage of air defense missiles capable of shooting down ballistic missiles. kyiv relies heavily on US Patriot air defense systems to intercept such weapons, but interceptors remain in short supply and are among Ukraine’s most urgent requests from its Western partners.
Developing a domestically produced alternative has become a top priority for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, although doing so will require time and funding.
Fires continue until morning in Kyiv after attack
Damage was reported at 50 locations in 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, he said.
The fires continued into the morning, complicating rescue efforts as buildings collapsed from the explosions.
“It was a terrible night and nothing like this had ever happened in the entire war,” said Svitlana Onofryichuk, 55, a kyiv resident who had worked at the damaged market for 22 years.
“I am very sorry to have to say goodbye to kyiv now, I will not stay there anymore, there is no chance,” he added. “My job is over, everything is over, everything has burned.”
Yevhen Zosin, 74, a kyiv resident who witnessed the attack, said that 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 blast 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, causing a fire and one person to die, Ukraine’s state emergency service reported.
A school building was damaged by an attack as people took shelter inside, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Local authorities reported that supermarkets and warehouses throughout the city also suffered damage.
Several communities reported damage across the kyiv region, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, head of the regional administration.
Elsewhere, a Ukrainian drone killed a civilian in the Russian town of Grayvoron in the Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, local authorities reported Sunday morning.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down or jammed 33 Ukrainian drones overnight 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.
