President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on 23 May that Russia may be preparing a strike on Ukraine using the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, and urged people to take air-raid warnings seriously from that evening onward. He said Ukrainian intelligence had received the warning through partners in the United States and Europe.
“Our intelligence services reported receiving data, including from American and European partners, about Russia preparing a strike with the Oreshnik missile. We are verifying this information,” Zelenskyy said. He added that Ukraine was seeing signs of preparations for a combined strike on Ukrainian territory, including Kyiv, and that the weapon could be used in such an attack.
The warning lands at a moment when Kyiv says it is trying to strengthen its defenses as much as possible, while bracing for the possibility of a broader assault. Zelenskyy said the public should respond consciously to air-raid alerts from the evening of 23 May and later, and said Ukraine would answer every Russian strike “fully and justly.”
He linked the threat to the wider stakes of the war, saying Russia has “no permission for madness” and that allowing such attacks would create a dangerous precedent for other aggressor states. In his words, if Russia is allowed to destroy lives on such a scale, no agreement will restrain other regimes driven by hatred from aggression and strikes.
The friction in the warning is clear: Zelenskyy presented the information as intelligence that still had to be verified, yet told the public to act on it now. That mix of caution and urgency reflects a government trying to avoid panic while preparing for a possible combined attack that could reach the capital and other parts of the country.
He closed by pressing for preventive pressure on Moscow, not a response after the fact, and by returning to the civilian risk at the center of the warning. “We have given permission for a parade, but Russia has no permission for madness,” he said, urging people to use shelters and protect their lives through the night.
