RUSSIA used its powerful hypersonic Oreshnik ballistic missile during a mass drone and missile attack on Kiev on Sunday that killed at least two people, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It marks the third time the deadly weapon has been used in the four-year war.

The intense aerial assault damaged buildings across the Ukrainian capital, Ukrainian authorities said. At least 83 people were wounded in the attack.

The attack included 600 strike drones and 90 air, sea and ground-launched missiles, according to Ukraine’s air force. Air defences say they destroyed and jammed 549 drones and 55 missiles while about 19 missiles failed to reach targets.

Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s foreign minister, reported that the residence of the Albanian ambassador to Ukraine was hit during the attack, denouncing it as a “grave escalation.”

The Oreshnik, which is capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads, struck the city of Bila Tserkva in the Kiev region, President Zelensky said on social media.

Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed the weapon’s use, as well as other missile types, to strike Ukrainian “military command and control facilities,” air bases and military industrial enterprises. 

It said the attack was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on civilian facilities on Russian territory.

On Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced a drone strike on a college dormitory that killed 21 and wounded 42 others in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, which Moscow blamed on Kiev. He said there were no military or law enforcement facilities near the college. Mr Putin said he ordered the Russian military to launch a retaliation.

At a United Nations security council emergency meeting on the strike, held at the request of Russia, Ukrainian ambassador Andrii Melnyk denied his Russian counterpart’s accusations of war crimes, calling them a “pure propaganda show” and asserting that Friday’s operations “exclusively targeted the Russian war machine.”