Russia uses hypersonic missile on Ukraine in a warning to the West

The European Union's top foreign policy envoy said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reply to diplomacy was “more missiles and destruction.”

Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles in a large-scale overnight attack, officials said Friday, killing at least four people in the capital. For only the second time in the nearly 4-year-old war, it used a powerful, new hypersonic missile that struck western Ukraine in a clear warning to Kyiv’s NATO allies.

The intense barrage and the launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile came days after Ukraine and its allies reported major progress toward agreeing on how to defend the country from further Moscow aggression if a U.S.-led peace deal is struck.

Europe’s leaders condemned the attack as “escalatory and unacceptable,” and the European Union’s top foreign policy envoy said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s reply to diplomacy was “more missiles and destruction.”

The attack also coincides with a new chill in relations between Moscow and Washington after Russia condemned the U.S. seizure of an oil tanker in the North Atlantic. It comes as U.S. President Donald Trump signaled he is on board with a hard-hitting sanctions package meant to economically cripple Moscow, which has given no public signal it is willing to budge from its maximalist demands on Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said four people were killed and at least 25 wounded in Kyiv as apartment buildings were struck overnight.

Those killed included an emergency medical aid worker, according to Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko. Four doctors and one police officer were injured while responding to the attacks, authorities said.

About half of snowy Kyiv’s apartment buildings — nearly 6,000 — were left without heat amid daytime temperatures of about minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 Fahrenheit), Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Water supplies also were disrupted.

Municipal services restored power and heat to public facilities, including hospitals and maternity wards, using portable boiler units, he said.