KYIV: Russia urged foreign nationals on Monday to leave Kyiv before it launches a “series of systematic strikes” against defence targets in Ukraine’s capital, a day after one of its heaviest bombardments of the city since the start of the war.

Russia’s foreign ministry said the strikes were a response to what Moscow says was a deliberate drone strike on a student dorm in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s military denied the Russian accusations and said it had struck an elite drone command unit in the area. “Under these circumstances, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are launching a series of systematic strikes against Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprises in Kyiv,” the ministry said in a statement. The strikes will include specific sites involved in the design and manufacture of drones as well as decision-making centres and command posts, it said.

In Kyiv, rescuers worked on Monday to deal with the aftermath of Sunday’s strikes, which authorities said had killed two people and injured 91. Moscow fired an Oreshnik hypersonic missile near Kyiv — its third use of the nuclear-capable weapon in the more than four-year-old war.

Around 300 sites across Kyiv were damaged, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. One of the sites was a newly opened museum commemorating the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, which was badly damaged in Sunday’s strikes.

“As of today, there is not a single room in the National Chornobyl Museum that has not been destroyed,” the museum’s director Vitalina Martynovska said.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2026