ReutersRussia used the Oreshnik ballistic missile in a massive nighttime strike against Ukraine.
Four people were killed and 25 others injured Thursday evening in kyiv, where loud booms could be heard for several hours, setting the sky ablaze with explosions.
This is only the second time Moscow has used the Oreshnik, which was first deployed to strike the central city of Dnipro in November 2024.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the strike was a response to a Ukrainian drone attack targeting Vladimir Putin’s residence in late December, which Kyiv denies carrying out.
Although the ministry did not specify what the Orechnik’s target had been, shortly before midnight (2200 GMT), videos began circulating on social media showing numerous explosions on the outskirts of the western city of Lviv.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian authorities have confirmed that a ballistic missile struck infrastructure in Lviv, about 60 km from the Polish border.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, meaning it can potentially reach up to 5,500 km (3,417 miles). It is believed to have a warhead that deliberately fragments during its final descent into several independently targeted inert projectiles, causing distinct repeated explosions moments apart.
“Such a strike near the borders of the EU and NATO poses a serious threat to the security of the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said.
The strike was launched “in response to [Putin’s] own hallucinations,” he added, referring to the alleged drone attack on the presidential residence in December.
The EU immediately raised serious doubts about whether the drone attack was real, and last week Donald Trump said he did not believe such an attack took place.
On Friday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the Russian strike on Oreshnik was a warning to Europe and the United States.
“Putin doesn’t want peace, Russia’s answer to diplomacy is more missiles and destruction. This deadly pattern of major, recurring Russian strikes will repeat itself until we help Ukraine break it,” she wrote on X.
Zelensky said that in addition to the Oreshnik, 13 ballistic missiles targeted energy facilities and civilian infrastructure overnight, as well as 22 cruise missiles and 242 drones.
One of them damaged a Qatari embassy building, he added.
He accused the attacks of being aimed “against the normal life of ordinary people” during a cold snap and added that everything was being done to restore heating and electricity.
As Lviv and other western regions were targeted Thursday evening, more than a dozen missiles and hundreds of drones were deployed in the attack on kyiv.
A rescue worker was among those killed as he arrived at a damaged apartment in kyiv. The capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, and Zelensky said it was a “double strike”, in which the first strike is followed by a second, killing rescuers who arrived to help the injured.
Two apartment buildings along the eastern bank of the Dnipro River and a high-rise building in the city’s central district were also targeted.
Power supply has been interrupted in several parts of the city amid a particularly harsh winter and as kyiv braces for temperatures of -15C this weekend.
On Friday, Klitschko urged kyiv residents to leave temporarily if they could and find warmth.
“Half of kyiv’s apartment buildings – almost 6,000 – are currently without heating due to damage caused to the capital’s critical infrastructure by a massive enemy attack,” he wrote on social media.
“I also appeal to residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city to places with alternative sources of electricity and heating.”
Targeting power plants has become a constant feature of this war, with Ukraine increasingly responding in kind to Russia’s sustained attacks on energy infrastructure, which regularly deprive millions of people of access to electricity or heat.
On Thursday evening, as Moscow’s attack on Ukraine continued, half a million people in Russia’s Belgorod region were left without power following Ukrainian bombing of infrastructure, the local governor said.
Authorities also said a Ukrainian strike on a Russian power plant in the northern city of Orel had affected water and heating systems.
