Russia has issued a stark warning to foreign nationals and diplomats in Kyiv to leave the Ukrainian capital “as soon as possible,” threatening a fresh wave of strikes on government buildings, military command posts and drone manufacturing facilities — just days after one of the most devastating attacks on the city since the war began.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it had recommended that the United States and other countries with diplomatic missions in Kyiv ensure the evacuation of their personnel, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov personally informing US Secretary of State Marco Rubio of Moscow’s plans to strike the capital. The ministry warned civilians to stay away from government and military buildings, threatening to target “decision-making centres and command posts” in what it described as “systematic strikes.”
Ukraine dismissed the warnings as intimidation. Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga urged allies to hold firm. “We are now telling our partners that they should not give in to all this Russian blackmail,” he said. France echoed that defiance. A spokesperson for the French foreign ministry said: “We’re used to Putin’s threats. It is out of the question to evacuate” its diplomats from Kyiv.
The threats follow a weekend of intense bombardment that President Volodymyr Zelensky said killed four people and injured around 100 in the capital. Moscow claimed the strikes were carried out in retaliation for what it described as a deliberate Ukrainian attack on a student dormitory in the Russian-occupied city of Starobilsk on Friday, which the Kremlin said killed 21 people and prompted President Vladimir Putin to order military reprisals. Ukraine’s military rejected that characterisation, saying it had struck an elite Russian drone unit in the area and had not targeted civilians.
It is not the first time Russia has issued evacuation warnings in recent weeks. Earlier this month, Moscow threatened massive strikes on central Kyiv if Ukraine disrupted a military parade on Red Square, prompting a similar call for foreign citizens and diplomats to leave the city.
Meanwhile, Russian attacks continued elsewhere. On Monday, strikes killed four people and wounded more than a dozen others in eastern Ukraine. Two men aged 68 and 25 died and nearly two dozen others were wounded in an attack on the town of Dergachi in the Kharkiv region, according to regional governor Oleg Synegubov. A separate strike on Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region killed two more people, the city’s mayor Oleksandr Goncharenko confirmed on Facebook.
The escalation comes as Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine was making little headway in securing expanded US support for missile defence production. “Unfortunately, there has been no progress for a long time with America regarding the expansion of anti-ballistic missile production,” he said on Monday, adding that Ukraine was now working with European partners to accelerate production of its own anti-ballistic systems on the continent. He stressed that US leadership remained vital to the effort.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The conflict has since become Europe’s deadliest since the Second World War.
