«We have experienced one of the worst nights in our area since the beginning of the war. On the night of Pentecost, Kiev suffered a massive attack. Just before dawn, around 4 in the morning, a rocket destroyed the building adjacent to our monastery.” Speaking on Sunday 24 May, a few hours after the end of a night of terror in Kyiv, is Father Jaroslaw Krawiec, Polish priest, for years superior of the Dominican friars in Ukraine (who returned permanently to the country in 1993 and are present in the territory with six offices).
The Dominican monastery, with the St. Thomas Aquinas Institute of Religious Sciences in Kyiv was involved in the attack, although fortunately without casualties or injuries. «Many windows and doors of our monastery were broken and damaged. The rooms in which we live, the chapel, the auditorium and the conference rooms of the Institute of St. Thomas Aquinas have suffered damage”, reports Father Jaroslaw. «Thank God none of the brothers and our guests were injured. Unfortunately, however, there are injured people among our neighbors, the inhabitants of the affected building. A few minutes ago, a large drone flew over our heads again and after a few seconds we heard an explosion from afar… We ask for your prayers.”
The raids also targeted the neighborhood where the Apostolic Nunciature is located, which suffered only some damage. “We are all fine, but it was a very heavy night in Kyiv,” he reports father Luca BovioConsolata missionary for many years in Warsaw, originally from Milan, first director of the Pontifical Missionary Works (PMS) in Ukraine, who shows a video of the metro station near the Nunciature – where he also currently resides – completely engulfed in flames, in an infernal scenario.
«Peace must be built with a serious openness to political dialogue. But the key to this opening lies in the hands of Moscow”, is the comment released to the SIR agency by the Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Visvaldas Kulbokas.
The massive Russian attack once again caused the population of the capital to experience hours of anguish, until dawn. A wave of 90 missiles and over 600 drones hit the city and region of Kyiv. The provisional toll is four dead and around a hundred injured. It could have been a massacre if a few hours earlier President Zelensky had not sent a message to citizens warning them of a probable large-scale attack, including the possible use of the Oreshnik ballistic missile. A warning to which the inhabitants they reacted by taking shelter in shelters, basements, subway stations, exactly like in the first months of the war.
Moscow has launched a heavy “retaliation”, declared by the Russian Defense Ministry, against Ukrainian attacks on civilian infrastructure. Russian sources reported that on the night of May 21-22, Ukrainian drones destroyed a student dormitory in the occupied Luhansk region, resulting in 21 deaths (the Ukrainian army for its part said it had hit an elite drone command unit in the area). Shortly before, Kyiv’s forces had struck the headquarters of the FSB, the Federal Security Service of Russia, the intelligence agency that replaced the Soviet KGB.
Confirmation of the use of the Oreshnik missile came from Moscow, launched on the town of Bila Tserkva, 90 km south of the capital. This is the third time since the large-scale war began, in February 2022, that Russia uses its new, powerful, fearsome weapon, the Oreshnik, a name which in Russian means “hazelnut”. It is a hypersonic, medium-range ballistic missile capable of traveling at such a high speed (more than ten times the speed of sound) that it escapes traditional anti-missile defenses. The Oreshnik has the peculiarity of being able to carry both conventional and nuclear warheads (therefore multiple separate warheads). With an estimated range of between 3,000 and 5,500 km, it has the ability to hit targets in Europe and this makes him particularly threatening. The first two times that the Oreshnik was used were on November 21, 2024 against an industrial complex in Dnipro and on January 9 in the Lviv region.
A little girl with her dog walks past a building hit by the Russian attack on Kyiv.
(REUTERS)
Since the three-day truce between Russia and Ukraine ended between May 9 and 11, attacks have resumed massively, in a back and forth between the two countries that has created a vicious circle, difficult to break. The first major offensive was launched immediately after the end of the truce by Moscow’s forces on Kyiv, causing 24 civilian victims, residents of a nine-storey apartment building hit by a raid. An action to which Ukraine reacted by in turn launching attacks on Russian territory. Moscow still responded and so on, in a crescendo of retaliations: an alarming escalation with no end in sight.
In light of this difficult situation, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Andrii Sybihacalled for the urgent convening of the United Nations Security Council. Europe has strongly condemned the use of the Oreshnik missile. Kaja Kallasthe European Union’s top foreign policy official, said that the use of Oreshnik ballistic missiles against Ukraine “It represents a political scare tactic and a reckless nuclear risk policy.”
An intimidation of Ukraine and Europe. But this move it could also reveal Moscow’s frustration entangled in the reality of a conflict in which, in fact, it is unable to impose itself in the ways and times in which it hoped, as highlighted by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenstating, regarding the Russian attack, that «Terror against civilians is not force. It’s desperation.”
Yesterday – as reported The Kyiv independent – the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made that from the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022 Russian military losses amount to just under one million 356 thousand soldiers (the report also calculates losses in terms of vehicles and armaments). The General Staff does not reveal the extent of Ukrainian losses. However, as he notes The Kyiv Independent. Independent Western research centers agree that Russian losses significantly exceed those suffered by Kyiv’s forces.
