At least four people were killed and 22 were wounded in Russian drone attacks on Kiev during the night, Ukrainian authorities announced. Russia targeted Kiev with drones, while critical infrastructure in the western city of Lviv was hit by an unidentified ballistic missile.
The Western Command of the Ukrainian Air Force announced that it was determining what type of missile it was.
Several neighborhoods in Kyiv were hit in the attack, and in parts of the capital, water and electricity supplies were cut off, officials said.
The attacks came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was planning a large-scale offensive.
Russia: Oresnik hypersonic missile launched
The Russian military said it had fired its Oreshnik hypersonic missile at a target in Ukraine, as part of what it called a massive nighttime attack on energy facilities and drone production facilities.
The Ministry of Defense stated in a statement that the attack was carried out in response to an attempted Ukrainian drone attack on one of President Vladimir Putin’s residences at the end of December. Kyiv has called Russia’s claim that it tried to attack a residence in the Novgorod region “false,” Reuters reports.
The governor of Ukraine’s western Lviv region earlier said the Russian attack hit an infrastructure target, and unverified reports on social media claimed it was a large underground gas storage facility. Reuters could not confirm this.
Moscow first fired Oreshnik, which means “hazelnut” in Russian, at what it called a military factory in Ukraine in November 2024.
At the time, Ukrainian sources claimed that the missile was carrying fake warheads, without explosives. Putin has stated that the Oresnik medium-range missile is impossible to intercept due to its alleged speed of more than ten times the speed of sound, and that its destructive power is comparable to a nuclear weapon, even when equipped with a conventional warhead.
Some Western officials have expressed skepticism about Oresnik’s capabilities. A US official said in December 2024 that the weapon was not considered a turning point on the battlefield.
