Ukraine’s capital Kyiv was hit by a massive strike of missiles and drones early on Sunday, shortly after its air force warned Russia might launch a hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile. Explosions reverberated through the city shortly after 1am after the air force announced a threat of an Oreshnik launch on its Telegram channel. At least three people were injured and several residential buildings were damaged across the city, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. “The capital has come under a mass ballistic missile attack,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv city military administration, said. “There are currently reports of at least four locations affected by the attack: Shevchenkivsky, Dniprovsky and Podilsky districts. Fires and damage to residential buildings are preliminarily reported,” he added. Debris was on fire on the premises of a school in the city centre, Klitschko said.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the use of such weapons as the Oreshnik missile “sets a global precedent for other potential aggressors”. He added in a social media post: “If Russia is allowed to destroy lives on such a scale, then no agreement will restrain other similar hatred-based regimes from aggression and strikes. We count on a response from the world – and on a response that is not post factum, but preventive. Pressure must be put on Moscow so that it does not expand the war.”
On Saturday, Zelenskyy had warned Russia was preparing a strike against Ukraine using the Oreshnik missile, citing intelligence from Ukraine, the US and Europe. Their alerts came after Russian officials said the death toll from a Ukrainian strike on a college and its dormitory in a Russian-occupied town in eastern Ukraine had risen to 18. Ukraine’s air force did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether an Oreshnik missile hit any target. Russia has already attacked Ukraine twice with the Oreshnik, a missile President Vladimir Putin has boasted is impossible to intercept because of its reported velocity of more than 10 times the speed of sound. Russia has deployed the Oreshnik to Belarus, its neighbouring ally, which as well as bordering Ukraine, has borders with three Nato member states: Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
A 23-year-old Briton has been killed in Ukraine. Reports emerged on Friday that Ayrton Redfearn had died in the Donetsk region on 9 May and were later confirmed to the BBC by his mother, who asked to be known as Natasha. She said the young man, from Devon, had joined a specialist unit supporting the Ukrainian army in 2025, and that she had “lived in fear of the police coming to my door with bad news”. “We are trying to have just 1% of the strength, bravery and courage of Ayrton, and if we can do this, it will help us to eventually come to terms with our life without him,” she said: “I am very grateful for all the tributes, messages and support from those who knew Ayrton and from strangers.” She added that her son had been due to receive a bravery award days after his death. Redfearn was a member of the Torquay Air Cadets as a child and at 17, he joined the RAF before travelling overseas, the BBC reported. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said: “We are supporting the family of a British national who has died in Ukraine, and are in contact with the Ukrainian authorities.” The FCDO warns that British nationals fighting in Ukraine face a high risk of maltreatment.
Acclaimed Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev urged Vladimir Putin to end the “carnage” in Ukraine on Saturday after his new movie set during the war came runner-up at the Cannes film festival. “Millions of people on both sides of the line of contact now dream of only one thing: that the massacres finally stop,” he said in his acceptance speech at the awards ceremony in Cannes. “And the only person who can put an end to this meat grinder is you … put a stop to this carnage, the whole world is waiting for this.” Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur was among the frontrunners for the Palme d’Or top prize for best film in Cannes, finishing with the second-place Grand Prix award behind Fjord by Romanian director Cristian Mungiu.
The UN said on Friday it “strongly condemns any attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, wherever they occur”, in the wake of a deadly Ukrainian drone strike in a Russian-occupied town in eastern Ukraine. Russia has accused Ukraine of targeting a student dorm in Starobilsk, in the occupied Lugansk region, saying the death toll has now risen to 18, with 42 wounded, some of whom are still trapped in the rubble. Kyiv has denied targeting civilians, insisting it had hit a Russian drone unit stationed in the Starobilsk area, and the UN noted it couldn’t verify details due to restricted access to the area. In Russia and on the occupied territories of Ukraine, a college is an equivalent of a vocational school, typically for students aged from 15 to 22 years.