Russia massively attacked the Ukrainian capital Kiev with drones and ballistic missiles on Sunday night.
May 24, 2026, 03:58May 24, 2026, 03:59
This emerged from warnings from the Ukrainian Air Force on the Telegram platform. The military also explicitly warned of a possible Russian attack with the particularly feared new Oreshnik medium-range missile.
A destroyed apartment in Kyiv after a Russian missile attack. (archive image)Image: keystone
The Kyiv Independent portal spoke of “a series of explosions” in the capital. Eyewitnesses on social media also reported the sounds of explosions. The full extent of the Russian attack on Kiev and its consequences were not immediately foreseeable that night. Other parts of the country were also attacked.
In the western neighboring country of Poland, the military announced on Platform In Poland, the air defense system is repeatedly alerted during major attacks in Ukraine, and sometimes fighter jets from NATO partners also take off.
Zelensky warns against Oreshnik: Citizens should go to bunkers
President Volodymyr Zelensky had previously warned on Saturday evening that an Oreshnik attack was to be expected. Kyiv is also in danger, he said, citing intelligence findings. He warned of a possible combined Russian attack with various types of weapons and called on citizens to go to shelters if there was an air raid.
It initially remained unclear whether Russia actually used an Oreshnik medium-range missile in the new attack on Kiev that night.
Russia has already used the ballistic missile with particularly high destructive power twice in its war of aggression against Ukraine – once in the large city of Dnipro in the southeast of the country without warheads and most recently in January in western Ukraine.
Ukraine attacked Russian dormitory with drones
The Russian attack follows a Ukrainian drone strike that hit a dormitory in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region on Friday. According to Moscow, 21 civilians, mostly young people, were killed. Kiev accused Russia of disinformation and claimed that the target of the attack was a Russian drone unit in the area. This in turn was denied by Vladimir Putin, saying that no such unit was stationed in the area.
Both warring parties always claim that they only attack military targets. Nevertheless, civilian deaths and injuries as well as the destruction of civilian infrastructure continue to occur on both sides. The casualties caused by Russian attacks in Ukraine are many times higher, and the country has been attacking civilian targets since the beginning of the war, whereas Ukraine had refrained from doing so for a long time.
Meanwhile, as Ukraine’s drone technology advances and Kiev’s attacks on targets in Russia increase, there are also more civilian casualties in the country that started the war more than four years ago.
(sda/dpa/con)