Over the weekend of 23–25 May, Russia conducted one of the largest single-night drone-and-missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital since the full-scale war began in 2022. Among the weapons fired was an Oreshnik hypersonic missile — a system capable of carrying nuclear payloads, first used in November 2024 against Dnipro and used sparingly since.
The attack killed civilians in central Kyiv and damaged residential buildings, government offices, and energy infrastructure. Several European leaders, including the foreign ministers of Germany and France, condemned the deployment of the Oreshnik specifically as an escalation that exceeded the previously established pattern of Russian strikes.
The ceasefire framework reported in Edition 001 — the territorial-stability arrangement that had been holding through April and into May — is now effectively defunct. Ukraine continues to report the small territorial gains it had been making through the same period, but those gains are now occurring against the backdrop of strategic-strike escalation rather than a stabilising framework. The diplomatic infrastructure built in March and April still exists on paper. What it can do in practice is a different question.
Russia's stated reason for the strike was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory, which have continued throughout the negotiation period. Ukrainian officials described the use of the Oreshnik as disproportionate and as evidence that the Russian leadership had elected not to honour the framework's restrictions.
The war's third anniversary passed in February 2026. The fourth approaches with the diplomatic effort more visibly fractured than at any point since its beginning.