Russia ‘uses new ballistic missile’ in massive strike on Ukraine

Russia has bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, killing at least four people.

For only the second time, it used a new ballistic missile that it says flies at 10 times the speed of sound and is unstoppable by air defences.

The intense barrage and the launching of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress towards agreeing on how to defend the country from further Moscow aggression if a peace deal is struck to end Russia’s almost four-year-old invasion.

Months of US-led peace efforts have failed to stop the fighting but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he has made significant progress on the terms of a possible peace settlement in talks with Washington envoys.

Moscow has given no public signal it is willing to budge from its demands.

The attack coincides with a new chill in relations between Moscow and Washington after Russia condemned the US seizure of an oil tanker in the North Atlantic. It also comes as President Donald Trump has signalled he is on board with a hard-hitting sanctions package meant to economically cripple Moscow.

Ukrainian officials said four people were killed and at least 22 wounded in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, during the overnight attack as apartment buildings were struck.

Those killed included an emergency medical aid worker. Four doctors and one police officer sustained injuries while responding to the ongoing attacks, authorities said.

About half of snowy Kyiv’s apartment buildings — nearly 6,000 — were left without heating amid daytime temperatures of around minus 8C, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The water supply was also disrupted.

Municipal services restored power and heating to public facilities, including hospitals and maternity wards, using mobile boiler units, he said.

The attack damaged the Qatari embassy in Kyiv, Mr Zelensky said on Friday. He noted that Qatar has played a key role in mediating the exchange of prisoners of war.

He called for a “clear response” from the international community, particularly from the United States, which he said Russia takes seriously.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said the attack was a retaliation to what Moscow said was a Ukrainian drone strike on President Vladimir Putin’s residence last month. Both Ukraine and Mr Trump have rejected the Russian claim of the attack on Mr Putin’s residence.

Mr Putin has previously said that the Oreshnik streaks to its target at Mach 10, “like a meteorite”, and has claimed it is immune to any missile defence system. Several of them used in a conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack, according to Mr Putin, who has warned the West that Russia could use the Oreshnik next against allies of Kyiv that allow it to strike inside Russia with their longer-range missiles.

Ukrainian intelligence said the missile has six warheads, each carrying six submunitions.

Russia did not say where Oreshnik hit, but Russian media and military bloggers said it targeted a huge underground natural gas storage facility in Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Western military aid flows to Ukraine from a big supply hub in Poland just across the border from Lviv.

Ukraine’s Security Service said it identified debris from a Russian Oreshnik missile in the Lviv area. It was fired from Russia’s Kapustin Yar testing range and targeted civilian infrastructure, investigators said.

Russia first used the Oreshnik missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024. Analysts say it affords Russia a new element of psychological warfare, unnerving Ukrainians and intimidating western countries that supply weaponry to Ukraine.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine would be initiating international action in response to the use of the missile, including an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council and a meeting of the Ukraine-Nato Council.

“Such a strike close to EU and Nato border is a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community. We demand strong responses to Russia’s reckless actions,” he said in a post on X.

Pope Leo XIV, speaking at the Vatican on Friday, urged the international community to keep pushing for peace and end the suffering in Ukraine.

“Faced with this tragic situation, the Holy See strongly reiterates the pressing need for an immediate ceasefire, and for dialogue motivated by a sincere search for ways leading to peace,” the pontiff told ambassadors to the Vatican from around the world.

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany said they spoke about the attack and deemed it “escalatory and unacceptable”.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said the Oreshnik launch was “meant as a warning to Europe and to the US”.

“Putin doesn’t want peace, Russia’s reply to diplomacy is more missiles and destruction,” Ms Kallas wrote on social media.

In the Desnyanskyi district of Kyiv a drone crashed onto the roof of a multi-storey building. At another address in the same district the first two floors of a residential building were damaged.

In the Dnipro district, parts of a drone damaged a multi-storey building and a fire broke out.

The attack took place just hours after Mr Zelensky alerted the nation about Russia’s intentions for a large-scale offensive. He said that Russia aimed to take advantage of the freezing weather in the capital, making roads and streets perilously icy.