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Russia hit Ukraine with its hypersonic Oreshnik missile overnight after rejecting the latest post-war peacekeeping plan, as part of a massive attack that set apartment blocks ablaze and killed at least four people in the capital Kyiv.
Ukraine and its Western allies, scrambling to bring an end to the war as it approaches the four-year mark, agreed this week that Europe would deploy troops after any ceasefire.
But Moscow, which says it launched its February 2022 invasion in part to prevent an expansion of the NATO defence treaty, has repeatedly rejected the idea of any Western forces stationed in Ukraine.
Such troops would be “considered legitimate military targets”, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned on Thursday, branding Ukraine and its American and European allies an “axis of war”.
As diplomats wrangle for a breakthrough in what has been Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, Russia has continued to press forward with its assault, bombarding Ukraine daily.
Russia’s defence ministry said it had used the Oreshnik hypersonic missile on “strategic targets” overnight, saying the attacks were in response to a December drone strike on a resident of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin. Ukraine has denied it was behind that attack.
Moscow did not provide any other details on the attack, but Ukrainian authorities said an infrastructure facility had been struck near the western city of Lviv by a ballistic missile travelling at hypersonic speed.
In Kyiv, drone strikes across the city killed four people and wounded at least 24 others, including emergency rescuers, police said. At a residential building on the city’s left bank, a medic was killed while responding to a strike as the site was hit a second time.
Some neighbourhoods were plunged into darkness during what Mayor Vitali Klitschko described as a “massive enemy missile attack”.
Across the border in Russia’s Belgorod, the governor said more than half a million people were without power or heating after a Ukrainian attack targeted the region’s utilities. Nearly 200,000 people were also cut off from water supplies, Vyacheslav Gladkov added.
Ukraine’s military put the entire country on missile alert early Friday after confirming Russian bombers were airborne.
Russia used an Oreshnik with a conventional warhead to strike the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine in late 2024.
