Russia Warns Kyiv Foreigners to Leave Before Planned Strikes
Russia warned foreign citizens to leave kyiv on Monday as Moscow said it plans a series of systematic strikes on defence industrial facilities in the Ukrainian capital. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the intended targets are “specific sites where UAVs are designed, manufactured, programmed, and prepared for use,” and said those facilities are scattered throughout the city.
The warning reached Washington as Sergei Lavrov advised Marco Rubio by telephone and urged the US Secretary of State to evacuate US embassy staff from Kyiv. Foreign citizens, including personnel of diplomatic missions and international organisations, were told to leave the city “as soon as possible.”
Russian ministry ties threat to Starobilsk
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said the planned strikes are a response to a Ukrainian drone attack last week that hit a student dorm in Starobilsk in the occupied Luhansk region. The strike killed at least 18 people, and the drone salvo that hit Starobilsk overnight on Thursday into Friday wounded 42 people. The Russian Foreign Ministry called the attack on Starobilsk “the last straw” and cited “flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law.”
Ukraine rejected responsibility for the Starobilsk strike. Ukraine’s military said it struck an elite drone command unit instead. Andrii Sybiha urged allies not to give in to Russian blackmail, putting the warning to foreigners inside a wider argument over who is driving the escalation and how far Moscow may go next.
Kyiv diplomats visit damaged district
On Monday, more than 70 foreign diplomats paid their respects to the victims of the strikes in Kyiv, where at least four people were reported killed and more than 60 injured in overnight attacks on the capital and surrounding region. Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv remains under repeated missile and drone attack, and the new warning places embassy staff, international organisation personnel, and other foreign residents in the capital inside that threat.
Gael Veyssiere, the French ambassador, visited a heavily damaged neighbourhood in Kyiv and said, “It’s a way to demonstrate resilience and I think it’s extremely important that we, around the world, we would support that,” after the visit. The immediate question now is whether foreign missions in Kyiv reduce staff further after Lavrov’s warning and whether Moscow follows through on the strike plan it has publicly set out.
