Four people were killed and 25 others injured in Kyiv on Thursday night, where loud booms could be heard for several hours, setting the sky alight with explosions. It only the second time that Moscow has used the Oreshnik, which was first deployed to hit the central city of Dnipro in November 2024. Russia's defence ministry said the strike was a response to a Ukrainian drone attack on Vladimir Putin's residence in late December, which Kyiv denies carrying out.

While the ministry did not specify what had been the Oreshnik's target, shortly before midnight (22:00 GMT) videos began circulating on social media showing numerous explosions on the outskirts of the western city of Lviv. Ukrainian authorities confirmed that a ballistic missile had struck infrastructure in Lviv, about 60km (40 miles) from the Polish border. The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range, hypersonic ballistic missile, meaning it can potentially reach up to 5,500km (3,417 miles). It is thought to have a warhead that deliberately fragments during its final descent into several, independently targeted inert projectiles, causing distinctive repeated explosions moments apart.

"Such a strike close to EU and Nato border is a grave threat to the security on the European continent and a test for the transatlantic community," Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said. The strike was launched "in response to [Putin's] own hallucinations," he added, referring to the alleged drone attack on the president's home in December. The EU immediately cast serious doubt on whether the strike had ever happened, and last week Donald Trump said he did not think any such attack had taken place. (BBC)