Russia fires cluster-warhead ballistic missiles at Kyiv, one hitting the historic Pechersk district near the Lavra, Zelensky says

Russia fired three ballistic missiles with cluster warheads at Kyiv overnight on 22 October, and one of them struck the historic Pechersk district between the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and a neighbouring monastery, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a statement reported by Ukrinform. Russia’s defence ministry says it targeted drone and missile production sites.

What Ukraine says happened

According to Zelensky, the warheads burst in the air above the target and scatter their submunitions over an area of roughly 400 metres. He said the missile that landed in Pechersk damaged monastery buildings, homes, shops, cafés and other civilian infrastructure, that no military facility stood nearby, and described it as “a deliberate choice of weapon, a deliberate choice of target area”. Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry, identified the weapon as an Iskander-M with a cluster warhead, as relayed by Euronews and Al Jazeera. The two outlets give different counts of submunitions, so Geopolitiki does not repeat either figure.

Zelensky said Russia launched 21 missiles in three ballistic waves at the capital. Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia used 210 drones, 110 of them jet-powered, together with Iskander-M, S-400, Zircon and Onyx missiles, and that air defences intercepted or suppressed 181 drones, according to Euronews. Ukrinform reported that Russian strikes on 12 regions overnight killed two people and injured 34. Early reports of the toll in Kyiv varied, and none of the figures has been independently verified.

Russia’s account

Al Jazeera reported that Russia’s defence ministry said it struck an assembly building for FP-5 long-range drones and FP-9 missiles, which it said Ukraine has used against Russia, along with other drone manufacturing sites. Ukraine’s account of civilian damage in Pechersk and Russia’s description of its targets are therefore different, and no independent body has so far assessed the site, as far as the sources read show.

Energy strikes and talks

Zelensky said Russia has carried out more than 170 strikes on critical energy facilities since 11 October. Geopolitiki reported on the latest outages in Russian strikes cut power to more than 500,000 Ukrainians in six regions, Ukraine’s energy ministry says, and on the earlier overnight exchange in Russia says it downed 808 Ukrainian drones in one night as Sobyanin reports 630 over the Moscow region.

The strike came hours after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, as Washington tries to revive peace talks, Euronews and Al Jazeera reported. Al Jazeera added that Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Russia had agreed “in principle” to a meeting on 10 November, with Abu Dhabi as the venue according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Zelensky said Russia had changed nothing in how it fights and was taking no steps towards ending the war, and asked the Defence Ministry, the military command and the Foreign Ministry to brief partners on the threat picture and called for faster delivery of agreed defence aid packages.

The claims above rest on statements by the parties to the conflict.