00:20Russia just used one of its most dangerous weapons on the planet and aimed it directly
00:26at the Kyiv region. A missile so fast, so powerful, and so difficult to intercept that Ukraine had
00:34almost no answer for it. And last night, Russia may have fired two of them. Overnight, on May 23rd,
00:42into the early hours of Sunday morning, Russia launched one of its most intense attacks on
00:48Ukraine's capital in recent memory. Dozens of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Iskandars,
00:54and waves of Shahed drones rained down on Kyiv, hitting every single district of the city.
01:01Residential buildings damaged, fires burning across the skyline, a school in the city center
01:07struck by debris, at least one person killed, more than 20 injured. But what's sending shockwaves
01:14through military circles isn't the scale of the attack, it's what Russia used. Meet the Oreshnik.
01:21It's an intermediate-range ballistic missile, nuclear-capable, hypersonic, traveling at speeds
01:28exceeding Mach 10, that's over 13,000 kilometers per hour. And it carries MIRVs, multiple independently
01:36targetable re-entry vehicles, meaning a single missile can split into up to six warheads mid-flight,
01:43each releasing its own sub-munitions on separate targets. It is, by design, nearly impossible to
01:51intercept. Russia has used it only twice before. November 2024, against the city of Dnipro. January
01:592026, against infrastructure in Lviv Oblast. Both times, it made global headlines. Last night,
02:07Russia reportedly fired two and pointed them at the capital region. If confirmed, that's more
02:15Oreshnik strikes in a single night than in the entire previous history of this war. Here's what
02:22makes this even chilling. Ukraine saw it coming. President Zelensky, backed by Ukrainian, U.S.,
02:29and European intelligence warned the day before that an Oreshnik strike on Kiev was imminent.
02:35Air raid sirens were blaring. Monitoring channels flagged a possible launch. Explosions were reported
02:42just after 1 a.m. local time. Russia framed this attack as retaliation, following a Ukrainian strike
02:49on a college dormitory in Stadobilsk, Luhansk, which Moscow claimed killed civilian students.
02:55But firing two of your rarest, most powerful non-nuclear missiles at a capital city, that's
03:02not just retaliation. That's a message. To put this in perspective, in just the past two weeks,
03:09Russia launched over 1,500 drones in a single two-day period against Ukraine. Ongoing strikes
03:16have hammered power grids, ports, and neighborhoods. The war of attrition is relentless. But the Oreshnik
03:23is different. It's not an attrition weapon. It's a statement weapon. Russia rolls it out when it wants
03:29the world to pay attention. When it wants Ukraine and the West to feel the ceiling of what's possible.
03:36Last night, that ceiling moved closer to Kiev than it ever has before. The casualty figures are still
03:43coming in. The damage is still being assessed. But one thing is already clear. Russia just raised the
03:50stakes again.
Comments