Russia says it used new Oreshnik hypersonic missile in massive attack on Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia bombed Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, officials said Friday, killing at least four people. For the second time, it used a new hypersonic missile that it says flies at 10 times the speed of sound and is unstoppable.

Ukraine’s security service said it considered the use of the missile a war crime.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that a Russian drone attacked the Qatari embassy. He noted that Qatar has played a key role in mediating the prisoner of war exchange.

The intense bombardment and launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported significant progress toward reaching an agreement on how to defend the country from further aggression from Moscow if a peace deal is reached to end Russia’s nearly four-year invasion.

Months of US-led peace efforts have failed to stop the fighthowever. Zelenskyy says he has made significant progress on the terms of a potential peace deal in talks with Washington’s envoys. But Moscow has given no public signal that it is willing to budge on its demands.

The attack also 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 comes as President Trump has signaled that he agrees with a strong sanctions package aimed at crippling Moscow economically.

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

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the attack was retaliation for what Moscow said was a Ukrainian drone attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence last month. But both Ukraine and Trump have rejected the Russian claim of the attack on Putin’s residence.

Ukrainian authorities said four people were killed and at least 25 wounded in the Ukrainian capital, kyiv, during the overnight attack in which apartment buildings were targeted. Zelenskyy said an ambulance crew member was among the dead and estimated the number of apartment buildings damaged at 20.

Four doctors and a police officer were wounded while responding to the ongoing attacks, authorities said.

About half of snowy kyiv’s apartment buildings – nearly 6,000 – were left without heat, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The water supply was also interrupted.

With temperatures around 17 degrees Fahrenheit and expected to drop further, Klitschko made a rare call on social media for “residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city for places with alternative sources of energy and heat to do so,” French news agency News reported.

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

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

Ukrainian intelligence says the missile has six warheads, each containing six submunitions.

The Reuters news agency quotes a senior Ukrainian official as saying that the one used in the attack probably carried inert or “dummy” warheads, and Moscow itself said on Telegram that it either had no warheads or had a very small one.

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

Russia first used the Oreshnik missile in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024. Analysts say it gives Russia a new element of psychological warfare, making Ukrainians nervous and frightening Western countries that supply weapons to Ukraine.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine would initiate 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 an attack near the EU-NATO border is a serious security threat 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 continue pushing for peace and ending the suffering in Ukraine.

“In the face of this tragic situation, the Holy See firmly reiterates the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire and for a dialogue motivated by a sincere search for paths that lead to peace,” the pontiff told ambassadors to the Vatican from around the world.