On the night of May 22, Ukrainian armed forces attacked the city of Starobelsk in the annexed Lugansk region. As a result of the drone attack, the buildings of a local college were partially destroyed. Under the rubble He died 21 people between 18 and 21 years old. In response, Vladimir Putin instructed the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to prepare a strike against Ukraine. On the night of May 24, Russian missiles and drones attacked the city of Kiev and cities of the Kiev region. The strike included the use of the Oreshnik medium-range strategic missile for the third time since 2024. The analysis section answers questions about the new round of escalation.
Russia accuses Ukraine of deliberately attacking the college in Ukraine Starobelsk. Why did the educational institution get hit?
Russian authorities – including from the podium United Nations Security Council – They call the attack on Starobelsk a terrorist act. According to official Russian data, there were about 80 students in the dormitory of Starobelsky College of Lugansk State Pedagogical University at the time of the drone attack. The building was partially destroyed by one or more drones; 21 people died. Many were injured.
For its part, the Ukrainian General Staff announced I mentionedThe target of the strike in Starobelsk was “one of the headquarters of the Rubicon Unit,” the main organization of the Russian Ministry of Defense for adapting and using various types of drones in warfare.
One foreign journalist brought to Starobelsk by Russian authorities on May 25 told Meduza that in the destroyed dormitory building one could actually see “typical teenage things.” He had no doubt that it was the students who lived there. Rescuers told him in detail how they pulled the young men out of the rubble. Meduza’s interlocutor did not see any trace of the presence of military personnel in the building. As evidenced by the fact that students died in the dormitory Reportage Kommersant newspaper, May 24.
However, in addition to the dormitory, several houses in the same building were destroyed, including the building of the Starobelsky Vocational College, adjacent to the dormitory of the Pedagogical College. According to Meduza’s interlocutor, the journalists could not see these buildings from the inside: the route was strictly regulated by the organizers, and, according to them, it was not safe to cross the perimeter cordoned off with tape. Rescuers working at the site reported only that no one had been injured in the educational and other administrative buildings in the two colleges since the strike occurred at night.
Representatives of foreign media were also shown fragments of drones, where the text in the Ukrainian language could be distinguished. Later, the journalists were taken to a hospital in Luhansk, where the victims were accommodated in Starobelsk. But the meeting with them never happened.
In recent days, a document allegedly issued by the director has been circulating on Ukrainian blogs and Telegram channels. professional University order dated January 2026, ordering the provision of accommodation in a residence for military personnel of the 88th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces (headquartered in Starobelsk; has its own barracks there). one Of the versions of this document signed by SN Barkov (present Name of college director) second – By some users of the Baranov SI social network I noticed That it was most likely fabricated.
As of the evening of May 25, we have no data on this dormitory professional (Not the educational college) was generally damaged upon impact. As well as the presence of military personnel (from Rubicon or another unit) in the destroyed dormitory Educational college. There are other versions put forward by Ukrainian sources Contradictions.
As a result, we can now only assume that the attack on the dormitory occurred as a result of an intelligence error – the most common reason why serviceable precision-guided munitions hit civilian targets in modern warfare.
Putin has frightened Ukraine and the West many times with his “nut tree.” — But other missile strikes lead to more casualties. Why?
Because at the moment the Russian Armed Forces use Oreshnik without a nuclear device and without any explosive device at all. The missile’s warheads strike targets using only kinetic energy – in effect, the metal “blanks” fall to Earth very quickly like a meteor. The throwing weight of the Oreshnik, capable of flying up to five thousand kilometers, according to the Russian authorities, is one and a half tons – for comparison, the weight of the intercontinental Yars is less – about 1.2 tons.
Yar is mentioned not by chance: many experts He thinksThat “Oreshnik” is a modification of the RS-26 “Rubezh” missile system (Russian designers stopped working on it in 2018) – and this, in turn, was a modification of the RS-24 “Yars”.
As we wrote in our analytical material, even if all the kinetic energy of the warhead is used to hit the target, the Oreshnik attack will not differ in consequences from the hit of several Iskander-M missiles with high-explosive warheads. At the same time, the cost of one Iskander missile is about three million dollars, and, for example, the Yars missile, which, as we noted, is a distant relative of the Oreshnik missile – in 2011 Rated About 30 million. There is another drawback for the attacking side: the low accuracy of these missiles, in combination with the low power of the kinetic ammunition (in terms of the energy released), does not make it possible to reliably hit any valuable enemy targets.
In previous times, Oreshniki flew to the territory of the Yuzhmash plant on the Dnieper (November 2024) and a gas field near Lvov (January 2026) – and each time the damage from their use was limited.
Perhaps this is what happened this time as well. The Russian Armed Forces attacked several targets using Oreshnik:
- Belaya Tserkov city district of Kyiv region. On strike shots visualAs in previous times, the multi-warhead missile was equipped with six warheads, each carrying six submunitions. This time, these objects moved visually more slowly than in recordings of the previous two attacks (but this may just be an optical illusion). It is difficult to say with certainty what exactly the target of the attack was. Footage of the destruction of the garage complex in Bila Tserkva has already appeared on the Internet. It is likely that the Russian Armed Forces were targeting the nearby JAC cargo aircraft complex;
- The area is supposed to be located in the area where the cities of Druzhkovka and Kramatorsk are located. Video is available for effect It has been removed From Donetsk, a very large distance to the northeast of the missile impact site, which makes determining the target of the attack more difficult in this case;
- Airport area “Gostomel” / “Antonov”. The fact that the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation targeted this target, which in the first phase of the Great War was supposed to become a base for the Russian attack on Kiev, is also indicated by the published publications. video.
The fact that from a military point of view, the use of Oreshnik (in a non-nuclear kinetic version) cannot be effective, does not negate the effectiveness of the political message of such strikes. Communicating such a message—primarily to the West—has been in development since the early 2000s, when problems associated with Russia’s new concept of nuclear deterrence became apparent. One of the options for solving the problems was precisely to convert strategic missiles into non-nuclear missiles – and to deliver “deterrent” strikes to the enemy, so that he understood that next time a nuclear charge might arrive. And then the consequences will be devastating.
It is difficult to say how many other Oreshnikov aircraft are in the arsenal of the Russian Armed Forces. British intelligence He believesThat this complex is a fragmentary weapon and it is unlikely that Russia has significant reserves of these missiles.
The Russian armed forces struck Kyiv and the region not only with Arshnik. What other missiles participated in the attack?
Indeed, in addition to the Oreshnik missile, the Russian army used an entire arsenal of missiles in the recent attack, male General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine:
- two “dagger”. This is a hypersonic ballistic missile for air strikes (carried by the MiG-31K fighter), which is a modification of the Iskander complex. In theory, the Kinjal can carry conventional and nuclear weapons. These missiles have been used against targets in Ukraine since 2022. It is not known what targets the Russian Armed Forces hit with daggers in the latest attack;
- three “zircon”. This is a hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile equipped with a ramjet engine, which has been used by the Russian army to strike targets in Ukraine since 2024. “Zircon” is launched from the territory of the annexed Crimea from mobile installations, which regularly change their location and make it difficult for the Ukrainian armed forces to detect strikes in time. We also do not yet know exactly where these missiles landed on May 24;
- 30 ballistic missiles “Iskander-M”/S-400. 11 of them were shot down, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Among the targets hit by “projectiles” in Kyiv Mentioned Defense Plant “Artem” and Headquarters of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The first facility has repeatedly become the target of Russian attacks, so the military feasibility of launching another strike on the facility is questionable. At the same time, the missiles fell in a densely populated area He drove As a result, dozens of civilians were injured (in total, as of the evening of 25 May, 91 people were injured in Kiev and more than 10 in the Kiev region; 2 people died in the Ukrainian capital; 2 more in the region) and damage to a large number of civilian infrastructure (shopping and entertainment center, market, metro station, residential buildings, museums, etc.).
- 54 cruise missiles X-101, “Caliber” and “Iskander-k” (44 were shot down, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.) He eats video 18 18-caliber missiles were launched from ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the port of Novorossiysk. Note that errors in targeting the 24 people died. In July 2024, the X-101 was partially launched Destroyed In the Ukrainian capital, the Ukhmatdet Children’s Hospital building;
- 600 drones (549, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, were shot down). The number of drones in itself does not constitute a record for attacks in Ukraine; Over the past month alone, the Russian Armed Forces have carried out several strikes of this scale against Ukraine. The danger of the latest raid lies precisely in the combination of the threat of drones and a large number of missiles of various types. Such attacks overburden Ukrainian air defense systems and could cause serious damage to Ukraine.
“Analysis” section