By trying to intimidate Ukraine and its allies by deploying a hypersonic missile, Moscow is trying to create fear, the head of EU diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, responded to the nighttime Russian attack. She stated that the ministers of foreign affairs of the EU member states will already next week deal with how to further increase international pressure on Russia, the TASR news agency reported.
- Moscow attacked Ukraine at night with a hypersonic missile of the Orešnik type.
- In the attack, approximately six hundred drones and ninety rockets killed four civilians.
- Kaja Kallas called the shelling of Ukrainian cities an intentional spread of terror.
- Russia claims that the attack was in retaliation for strikes on civilian infrastructure.
- The Oresnik missile has been used twice before and Moscow presents it as undetectable.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Russia used an Oreshnik-type missile against the city of Bila Tserkva, which is located southwest of Kyiv. The nighttime attack on Ukraine, in which, according to Kyiv, they deployed approximately 600 drones and 90 missiles, left at least four dead, two of them in the Ukrainian capital.
Intimidation tactics
Kallas said on the X social network that Russian troops have reached a stalemate at the front, and therefore they are trying to break Ukraine’s resistance by systematically shelling city centers. According to her, these are deliberate strikes on populated areas with the aim of spreading terror among the civilian population.
At the same time, the head of European diplomacy pointed out that she sees the deployment of the Orešnik missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, as a politically motivated attempt at intimidation and as a risky handling of the nuclear threat. She emphasized that she considers attacks of this type to be terrorist acts, the aim of which is to cause the highest possible number of civilian victims.
Russian justification for the attack
Moscow confirmed the deployment of the hypersonic missile, saying that it was part of a large-scale operation against command posts, military bases and arms industry enterprises in Ukraine. The Russian Ministry of Defense described the attack as retaliation for alleged Ukrainian strikes on civilian infrastructure.
At the same time, Russia accuses Kyiv of attacking a dormitory in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region. This incident is used by Moscow as one of the main justifications for the latest wave of missile and drone strikes.
Previous uses of Orešnik
Before Sunday’s attack, the Orešnik missile had already been used twice against targets in Ukraine. The first sharp deployment was recorded in November 2024 during the attack on Dnipro. Ukrainian sources claimed at the time that the missile carried only a training warhead without an explosive and therefore caused only limited damage.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that hypersonic missiles of this type cannot be intercepted, as they reach speeds that, according to him, exceed current air defense capabilities. Neither Ukraine nor its allies have publicly commented on these claims in detail.
