Ukraine calls on allies to raise pressure as Russia fires Oreshnik missile

Kyiv labelled the usage of the limb adjacent to the EU and NATO borderline a ‘grave threat’ to European security.

Kyiv has called connected its allies to summation unit connected Russia aft Moscow utilized a recently developed rocket successful strikes connected occidental Ukraine.

Russia said connected Friday that it had utilized the Oreshnik rocket amid a barrage of overnight strikes connected Kyiv and Lviv successful occidental Ukraine. Kyiv labelled the usage of the limb adjacent to the European Union and NATO borderline a “grave threat” to European security.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said the subject has utilized the caller intermediate-range ballistic rocket among hundreds of different weapons successful strikes that, according to Ukraine, killed 4 radical and injured astatine slightest 22 successful the capital.

Game changer?

Russia besides struck captious infrastructure successful Lviv utilizing an unidentified ballistic missile, said Mayor Andriy Sadovyi.

Ukraine’s Air Force aboriginal said the rocket travelled astatine a velocity of 13,000km/h (more than 8,000mph) and that the circumstantial benignant of rocket was being investigated.

Russia continues to people Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure successful nightly rocket and drone attacks (File: AFP)

Moscow archetypal fired an Oreshnik – Russian for hazel histrion – against what it said was a subject mill ‌in Ukraine successful November 2024. On that occasion, Ukrainian sources said the rocket was carrying dummy ‌warheads, not explosives, and caused constricted damage.

Putin has ⁠said that the intermediate-range Oreshnik rocket is intolerable to intercept due to the fact that of speeds reportedly much than 10 times the velocity of dependable and that its destructive powerfulness is ‌comparable with that of a atomic weapon, adjacent erstwhile fitted with a accepted warhead.

Some Western officials person expressed scepticism, suggesting that the limb is not seen arsenic a game-changer connected the battlefield.

‘Reckless’

The Defence Ministry successful Moscow said that the onslaught was successful retaliation for a Ukrainian drone onslaught connected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residence past month.

Ukraine and United States President Donald Trump person some rejected the Russian assertion of the onslaught connected Putin’s residence.

The ministry said the latest onslaught besides progressive different crushed and sea-launched missiles to people Ukraine’s captious infrastructure.

“Such a onslaught adjacent to [the] EU and NATO borderline is simply a sedate menace to the information connected the European continent and a trial for the transatlantic community. We request beardown responses to Russia’s reckless actions,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote connected societal media.

Rescue workers enactment retired a occurrence astatine a residential gathering damaged by a Russian onslaught successful Kyiv, Ukraine, connected Friday, January 9, 2026 [Efrem Lukatsky/AP]

‘Axis of war’

Ukraine’s entreaty to rise the unit connected Russia comes arsenic it continues to sermon efforts to extremity the astir four-year-long war with European and United States allies.

An statement was reached this week that Europe would deploy troops aft immoderate ceasefire, but Russia connected Thursday rejected the plan.

Such troops would beryllium “considered morganatic subject targets”, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned, branding Ukraine and its allies an “axis of war”.