Ukraine-Russia war latest: Kyiv hit by hypersonic ballistic missile as allies condemn ‘reckless escalation’
World leaders have condemned Russia after it attacked Kyiv with an Oreshnik hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile in an intense assault on the capital overnight.
The combined attack included 600 strike drones and 90 air, sea, and ground-launched missiles, according to Ukraine's air force.
At least four people have been killed in the attacks, while dozens more were injured, authorities said.
Several world leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, and vice-president of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, have criticised Russia.
Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz labelled Russia’s bombardment of the Kyiv region and its use of the Oreshnik missile system as a “reckless escalation”.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Moscow's escalating assault on Ukrainian civilians betrays its weakness.”
It comes after Vladimir Putin ordered his military to prepare options for retaliation for a drone strike on a student dorm in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine, which Kyiv denied responsibility for.
Russia has already attacked Ukraine twice with the Oreshnik, targeting Dnipro in November 2024 and the western Lviv region in January.
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Russia claims deadly attack on Kyiv was in response to Friday's dormitory attack
Russia’s defence ministry has said it attacked Ukraine yesterday using missiles and drones to strike Ukrainian “military command and control facilities,” air bases and military industrial enterprises.
The ministry claimed the deadly attack was in retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on “civilian facilities on Russian territory,” without giving detail.
Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday denounced a drone strike on a college dormitory in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, which Moscow blamed on Kyiv.
He said there were no military or law enforcement facilities near the college.
Putin said he ordered the Russian military to retaliate.
The death toll from that strike had risen to 21, Russian authorities said late Saturday.
They said 42 other people had been wounded in the attack the previous night. The Kremlin-installed authorities of the Luhansk region announced two days of mourning for the victims.
At a UN Security Council emergency meeting on the strike, held at the request of Russia, Ukrainian ambassador Andrii Melnyk denied his Russian counterpart’s accusations of war crimes, calling them a “pure propaganda show” and asserting that the 22 May operations “exclusively targeted the Russian war machine.”
British man, 23, killed in action in Ukraine after joining specialist unit supporting army
A 23-year-old British man, Ayrton Redfearn, was killed in action in Ukraine's Donetsk region. He died on 9 May.
From Devon, Mr Redfearn had joined a specialist unit supporting the Ukrainian army in 2025, his mother, Natasha, told the BBC, adding she “lived in fear of the police coming to my door with bad news”.
“This fear became reality on the evening of 11 May, and the world of myself, and Ayrton’s 10-year-old brother, then fell apart,” she said.
Mr Redfearn was a Torquay Air Cadet as a child, joining the RAF at 17 before travelling overseas.
His mother stated: "We are trying to have just 1 per cent 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.
British man, 23, killed in Ukraine after joining specialist unit supporting army
His mother said her worst fear came true when police knocked at her doorArpan Rai25 May 2026 07:28Ukraine says it hit oil pumping station in Russia's Vladimir region
Ukraine's SBU security service said its drones attacked an oil pumping dispatch station in Russia's Vladimir region yesterday, adding that the facility was an important node in pumping oil products southwest to Moscow and its surrounding area.
Avdeyev's post, quoted by Interfax news agency, referred only to the fire being at an infrastructure site and gave no indication that it was linked to the oil industry.
"It supplies fuel to major oil depots around Moscow and to Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Vnukovo airports," the SBU said in a statement on social media.
It added that a fire over an area spanning 800 square metres (8,600 square feet) was recorded after the strike.
The governor of Vladimir region, Alexander Avdeyev, said in a social media post that the fire near the town of Kameshkovo had been extinguished.
Arpan Rai25 May 2026 07:14Macron asks Belarus to improve ties with Europe and not get drawn in Russia’s war
French president Emmanuel Macron and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko spoke by phone on Sunday to discuss regional issues and Minsk’s relationship with the European Union, as well as with Paris, officials said.
The conversation is the first such direct contact between the two leaders since the invasion of Ukraine by Lukashenko's closest ally Vladimir Putin in February 2022.
"Macron emphasised the risks for Belarus if it allows itself to be drawn into Russia's aggressive war against Ukraine," a source told AFP.
"He also called on Alexander Lukashenko to take the necessary steps to improve relations between Belarus and Europe,” they added.
Arpan Rai25 May 2026 06:54Ukraine's air defence missile shortage in focus after Putin's major aerial barrage
Volodymyr Zelensky has said not all the ballistic missiles fired by Russian forces were intercepted and that most of the strikes hit Kyiv, which was the primary target of the attack.
The latest combined attack included 600 strike drones and 90 air, sea and ground-launched missiles, according to Ukraine's Air Force. Ukrainian air defences destroyed and jammed 549 drones and 55 missiles. Around 19 missiles failed to reach targets, the Air Force said.
The attack and the apparent interception failures underscored Ukraine’s chronic shortage of air defence missiles capable of downing ballistics.
Kyiv relies heavily on US Patriot air defence systems to intercept such weapons, but interceptor missiles remain in critically short supply and are among Ukraine’s most urgent requests to its Western partners.
Developing a domestically produced alternative has become a top priority for Ukraine’s defence ministry, though doing so will require significant time and funding.
By saturating Kyiv with large numbers of ballistic missiles on Sunday, Russia may also be seeking to deplete Ukraine’s limited stocks ahead of what could be an even more intense wave of attacks this summer.
How Ukraine and Russia’s drone war spread into Europe as Putin ‘hijacks’ Kyiv’s weapons in mid-air
The war between Russia and Ukraine has brought an unlikely weapon to the forefront – the unmanned aerial vehicle, better known as a drone – changing the landscape of global conflict.
The Ukraine-Russia war is the first to use the weapons on a widespread scale, with hundreds of thousands deployed across the four years since the Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
Just this weekend, Putin launched 600 drones in retaliation for what Moscow claimed was a Ukrainian drone strike on a school in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
But now these light aircraft threaten to spread the deadly war into mainland Europe, with experts claiming Putin has found a new way to agitate the West.
How Ukraine and Russia’s drone war spread to Europe as Putin ‘hijacks’ Kyiv’s weapons
Ukraine has developed unprecedented drone technology after being invaded by the Russian superpower, but now Moscow appears to be using the aircraft against Kyiv, threatening to cause chaos in Europe, reports Maira ButtArpan Rai25 May 2026 06:00Russia uses hypersonic Oreshnik missile in a rare deadly strike on Ukraine
Russia uses hypersonic Oreshnik missile in a rare deadly strike on UkraineRussia used the powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile during a mass drone and missile attack on Kyiv on Sunday that killed at least two people.
It was only the third time that Russia has used the Oreshnik missile against Ukraine since the war began with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The Oreshnik has a range of several thousand kilometres.
The previous two strikes had hit major cities, but Volodymyr Zelensky said this one had struck Bila Tserkva, a city of 200,000 people that lies about 64km (40 miles) from the outskirts of Kyiv.
The Oreshnik's warhead appears to have split into 36 submunitions, according to a review of Reuters footage of the strike by Rollo Collins, an investigator at the Centre for Information Resilience, an open-source investigation organisation.
Moscow said it had used Oreshnik, Iskander, Kinzhal and Zircon missiles in retaliation for Kyiv's strikes on civilian targets in Russia.
UK, France and other Nato members block military aid funding to Ukraine – report
The UK, France and other Nato states have blocked a plan under which each member would offer 0.25 per cent of their GDP to military aid for Ukraine, an alliance source said.
A Nato source aware of the member states not keen on backing the proposal said the primary opponents were the UK, France, Canada, Italy and Spain, reported The Telegraph.
“They’re not very enthusiastic about the idea,” they said.
Earlier, Nato secretary general Mark Rutte had said that the proposal would likely be rejected.
"I don't think this one will be accepted because there's a lot of opposition against this fixed 0.25," he said.
GPS signals of RAF jet carrying defence secretary ‘jammed by Russia’
An RAF jet carrying the defence secretary had its signals jammed as it flew near the Russian border this week.
John Healey was travelling back to the UK from Estonia, where he had been visiting British soldiers, when the electronic attack happened, according to The Times.
It is thought Russia was behind the incident on Thursday, which meant that smartphones and laptops were unable to connect to the internet and pilots had to use a different navigation system as the plane’s GPS was disabled for the entire three-hour flight.
It is not known if Mr Healey was deliberately targeted, but the flight path was visible on aircraft tracking websites, the newspaper reported.
Russia ‘jams GPS signals of RAF jet’ carrying defence secretary
John Healey was returning to the UK after visiting British troops in EstoniaArpan Rai25 May 2026 05:00Energy infrastructure damaged in missile attack on Russia's Belgorod
Energy infrastructure was damaged in a massive missile attack on Russia's Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, including the city of Belgorod, local officials said this morning.
There were no casualties but power and water supply were interrupted, Interfax news agency reported. It did not provide further details.
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