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.<\/p>\n
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian authorities confirmed that a ballistic missile had struck infrastructure in Lviv, about 60km (40 miles) from the Polish border.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said in addition to the Oreshnik there were 13 ballistic missiles that targeted energy facilities and civilian infrastructure overnight, along with 22 cruise missiles and 242 drones.<\/p>\n
One damaged a building at the Qatari embassy, he added.<\/p>\n
He accused the attacks of aiming “against the normal life of ordinary people” during a cold spell and added everything possible was being done to restore heating and electricity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the ministry did not specify what had been the Oreshnik’s target, shortly before midnight (22:00 GMT) videos…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-684318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115864814463179074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}