In the early hours of this Sunday, Russia punished kyiv and its region with one of the largest bombings of the war. More than 600 drones and 90 missiles have hit the Ukrainian capital and its province. The Russian army has once again used the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, designed for nuclear war. The attack has caused at least two deaths and 80 injuries.
The six explosive warheads of the Oreshnik have hit an undisclosed location in Bila Tservka, a municipality south of kyiv frequently attacked because military bases are concentrated there. The Russian army has used its most lethal weapons in the bombing. In addition to the Oreshnik, cruise and ballistic missiles fired from land, sea and air have been aimed at the capital and its region. The city has suffered impacts in all its districts for five hours, with dozens of buildings on fire. The bombing has caused significant damage in the center of kyiv, including the National Museum of Art of Ukraine, adjacent to the iconic Maidan Square. The Chernobyl disaster museum in the Pódil neighborhood was also partially destroyed by a missile.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram message that it was “a terrible night.” Many residents sought shelter overnight in the city’s subway stations.
The Russian army combined the launch of missiles with waves of Shahed bomb drones, to saturate anti-aircraft defenses. “This is a new tactic of terror from Russia, which had been deliberately accumulating missiles and drones for some time to carry out this attack and create the biggest problems for our anti-aircraft defenses,” the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on his social networks. The statistics provided by the Ukrainian Air Force confirm a lower rate of interception of enemy projectiles: 55 missiles were destroyed, just over half.
The previous major bombing of kyiv occurred on May 14. A total of one residential building was destroyed. Three days later, on May 17, Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Moscow, causing three civilian deaths.
kyiv was once again the main Russian objective this morning, although other provinces of the country have also been under enemy fire. It is the bombardment with the highest number of missiles in 2026 and we must go back to 2024 to find similar precedents. That year, more than 90 missiles were fired on three occasions.
Zelensky already warned on Saturday on his social networks that Russia was preparing an imminent attack with an Oreshnik. NATO intelligence services had detected movements for the launch at the base where this ballistic missile is fired, in the province of Astrakhan.
It is the third time in the four years of war that Russia uses an Oreshnik against Ukraine. against an industrial zone in the province of Dnipropetrovsk. It was the first time in history that a nuclear power used a missile of this type as a weapon of war. The occasion even merited the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sending a television message to the nation reporting on the attack.
The second occasion was last January against Lviv province. , without specifying. During that month, Russia concentrated its long-range fire against the energy network of the invaded country. That attack was also understood as a Russian threat to NATO because the place of impact was close to the border with Poland.
In these two precedents, Russia warned the United States half an hour in advance that it was going to fire the Oreshnik. Treaties between Russia and the United States require both parties to report the launch of this type of rocket because they are part of their arsenal for nuclear war. The Oreshnik reaches a suborbital altitude and then descends towards its target at a speed close to 13,000 kilometers per hour. It is unknown whether on this occasion Moscow has notified Washington, although Zelensky did point out on Saturday that the United States had warned his government of the imminent firing of this missile.
