Russia carried out one of its most intense aerial assaults on Kyiv in recent months, unleashing a barrage of drones and missiles that lasted for hours and left at least four people dead, authorities said on Sunday. According to Ukrainian officials, the attack involved around 600 drones and 90 missiles. Of these, 549 drones and 55 missiles were intercepted by air defence systems.
During the strikes, Moscow used a rare ballistic missile known as Oreshnik. Ukrainian authorities said the missile hit Bila Tserkva, a town in the Kyiv region, though the exact target was not disclosed.
The attack followed warnings issued a day earlier by Volodymyr Zelensky and the US embassy in Kyiv about a possible large-scale Russian strike. The escalation also came after Vladimir Putin pledged a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on Starobilsk in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region.
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What is the Oreshnik missile?
Oreshnik is described as an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a reach of 3,000 to 5,500 kilometres. Russian officials claim it can strike targets across Europe. Sergei Karakayev has said the missile is capable of hitting a wide range of distant locations.
Putin has stated that the missile travels at speeds of up to Mach 10, making it extremely difficult to intercept. While it operates at hypersonic speed, experts note that it may not have the same manoeuvrability seen in other hypersonic weapons.
Russia pounded Kyiv and surrounding areas with hundreds of drones and missiles, including the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, in one of the heaviest bombardments of the city since the start of the war https://t.co/8RMwjvfXYA pic.twitter.com/yCpaIaS3C0
— Reuters (@Reuters) May 24, 2026
The Russian president has also claimed that the missile generates temperatures comparable to the surface of the sun during flight.
Debate over nuclear capability
In 2024, Putin said the missile carries “dozens of warheads, homing warheads,” but insisted it does not cause mass destruction because “there is no nuclear warhead, and that means there is no nuclear contamination after its use.” However, military analysts have suggested the system could be configured to carry nuclear warheads. The missile used in Sunday’s strike did not carry a nuclear payload.
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Putin described its destructive impact, saying “everything in the epicentre of the explosion breaks up into fractions, into elementary particles, essentially into dust.”
‘Complete chaos’ on the ground
Residents described a night of panic as explosions echoed across the city. “There were three loud explosions, and after the fourth one the ceiling in the metro started crumbling,” AFP quoted 21-year-old Sofia Melnychenko as saying.
“There was complete chaos. Children started screaming, people were panicking,” she said, calling it “a very frightening night.”
By morning, large sections of the city showed damage, with debris scattered across residential and public buildings, including schools, theatres and shopping centres.
