Twenty-four hours until “retribution.” How propaganda justifies the massive attack on Kyiv

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Russians portray the attacks on Ukraine as “retaliation” for the strike on Starobilsk.

On the night of May 24, 2026, Russia carried out one of the largest combined aerial attacks since the start of the full-scale invasion. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, radio engineering troops detected up to 690 aerial attack assets — around 600 strike drones and more than 80 missiles of various types, including the RS-26 Rubezh intermediate-range ballistic missile, known as “Oreshnik.” It was launched from the Kapustin Yar testing range in Russia’s Astrakhan region and directed toward the Bila Tserkva district of Kyiv region. The strike hit the territory of a garage cooperative and an area near military infrastructure; according to analysts at Defence Express, the explosion’s power was comparable to that of approximately 36 Shahed drones — without a nuclear warhead and without the noticeable destructive effect that Russian propaganda had demanded from the “Oreshnik.”

The attack came two days after, on the night of May 22, the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck a number of enemy facilities in occupied Starobilsk in Luhansk region — an oil refinery, ammunition depots, air defense assets, command posts — among them, as confirmed by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one of the headquarters of the Russian Rubikon drone special unit. Russia, meanwhile, insisted that the strike had damaged the building of a former pedagogical college where students were allegedly staying overnight. On the same day, Vladimir Putin promised a “response” for Starobilsk, so both the Russian Ministry of Defense and propaganda framed the attack on Kyiv as a “strike of retribution” — symbolic revenge for the “children of Starobilsk.”

The Detector Media Research Center analyzed how propaganda Telegram channels justified one of the largest combined aerial attacks involving drones and various types of missiles, including the “Oreshnik.”

We analyzed 406 posts in Russian and pro-Russian Telegram channels with more than 50,000 subscribers, published between midnight on May 23 and 1:00 p.m. on May 25. The information from Telegram channels was provided by the company Lets Data. The Russian-language search query included derivatives of the place names Starobilsk, Bila Tserkva, and Kyiv, as well as words associated with shelling: attack, shelling, missile, “Oreshnik.”

Before analyzing Russian propaganda narratives, it is necessary to establish the facts. The Ukrainian Defense Forces’ strike on Starobilsk was a strike on a city that Russia, since occupying it, has turned into a logistical and military hub in the northern Luhansk region. As ArmyInform writes, a number of Russian military structures operate there, including the Rubikon drone special unit, which, according to the same outlet, possesses FPV drones, Molniya drones, Lancets, Orlans, SuperCam, ZALA systems, and naval UAVs, and regularly attacks Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

On the night of May 22, according to official reports, the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck one of Rubikon’s headquarters. According to military analyst Ihor Savchuk, the strike hit not only the headquarters but also the “residence of pilots from the Rubikon unmanned systems center,” meaning cadets and instructors of the special unit. Defence Express expert Ivan Kyrychenko summarized it briefly in a comment to ArmyInform: “Drone operators hunting our citizens are a legitimate target.”

At the same time, the publication Realna Hazeta, citing social media data, wrote about the deaths of civilian students who were staying in a dormitory next to another destroyed building. All of the dead, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, experts, and investigators, were adults, which directly contradicts the propaganda claim about a “Ukrainian strike on children.”

On Friday, May 23, during a meeting with graduates of the “Time of Heroes” program, which prepares so-called “veterans of the special military operation” for work in Russian state institutions, Putin instructed the Ministry of Defense to prepare “response proposals” for the strike on Starobilsk, and Kremlin pool journalist Andrei Kolesnikov wrote that same evening, "'Oreshnik'—get ready.” The opposition Russian outlet Agentstvo described the sequence as deliberate dramaturgy: approximately 24 hours passed between Putin’s promise and the missile strike.

Russian pro-government bloggers presented the “retribution” as a media rather than military operation. Odesa collaborator Kyrylo Dimitriyev questioned the functional meaning of the idea: “What are ‘retaliatory strikes’? Whom are they retaliating against? A metaphorical, symbolic retaliation?” Russian propagandist and founder of the WarGonzo project Semyon Pegov reinforced the skepticism: “Some military targets in Kyiv will be hit a little more than usual. Some uninvolved people will die. And the ‘retaliation’ will end. Then we go back to what we had before.” These voices did not change the overall chorus — but they demonstrated that propagandists communicated the ritual of “retribution” as part of a political-media logic, not merely a military one.

Russian “human rights commissioner” Yana Lantratova also promoted narratives on the subject. Her statements were quoted, in particular, by the channels DNRDonetsk, Ssigny, and Donbas State News Agency. The administrators of these channels singled out several key propaganda theses from Lantratova’s words: “This is a war crime, this is the Starobilsk massacre”; “most of the dead students were between 14 and 18 years old”; “most of the female students killed in Starobilsk will be buried in wedding dresses.” The detail about “wedding dresses” spread to dozens of Russian channels as an emotional emphasis. The figures from Lantratova’s statement were likewise cited as proof of the “murder of Russian children.” For example, the channel Veterans’ Notes spoke about “86 teenagers aged 14 to 18” who “were sleeping before a regular school day.”

The Telegram channel Donbas State News Agency quoted RT “correspondent” Murad Gazdiev. He claimed there had been several consecutive strikes on buildings in Starobilsk “so the rubble could not be cleared.” According to him, “in addition to drones, there were glide bombs here, and cruise missiles were also used.” The latter claim is an outright lie: according to publicly confirmed data, the Armed Forces of Ukraine used drones, not missiles, in Starobilsk.

On May 24–25, the Russian Foreign Ministry gathered media representatives and took them on a press tour to Starobilsk. The media attendees were mainly from RT, Al Arabiya, Chinese state media, and Iranian state media — 50 representatives from 19 countries in total.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s chief “communicator,” Maria Zakharova, called the trip “a rebuff to outright lies in the UN Security Council,” where Latvia’s permanent representative had called the Ukrainian strike “a Kremlin fake.” Pakistani journalist Ishteaq Hamdani voiced the narrative desired by the Kremlin about Ukrainians: “They want to command, but they fail. Then they carry out such strikes and kill children.” Representatives of BBC, CNN, and Japanese media were not allowed to visit the site, according to Ukrainian journalist Denys Kazanskyi: “The Kremlin brought, as always, various paid foreigners whom it presents as journalists and who regularly produce false stories needed by the Kremlin. Real journalists, naturally, were not allowed in.” Later, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the BBC had “refused” to join the press tour, while CNN staff were supposedly on vacation. The BBC neither confirmed nor denied Zakharova’s statement.

“War correspondent” Oleksandr Kots created a symbolic personification of combat missiles: “‘Kinzhal’ missiles on Kyiv — for Dasha and Yana. ‘Iskanders’ on workshops in Kryvyi Rih — for Artyom and Maksym. ‘Kalibrs’ on Starokostiantyniv — for Sonya and Alina. Every warhead tonight bears the name and surname of someone who wanted to become a teacher and teach children.” Such rhetoric transforms violence into “justice” in the audience’s perception and legitimizes further strikes.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta presented the description of the “Oreshnik” strike on Bila Tserkva as spectacle: “The warheads dived in groups, at short intervals and with a hissing sound resembling the operation of multiple launch rocket systems... The image still turned out powerful.”

The Telegram channel of the Tsargrad TV network likewise linked the strike on Starobilsk with the shelling of Kyiv: “For the murdered children of Starobilsk, for Khoryly, Tuapse, Ust-Luga, Perm, and hundreds of civilians killed over all these years, this kind of treatment should be carried out daily.” Alongside the “murdered children of Starobilsk,” the list includes Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian military-industrial sites (Tuapse and Ust-Luga are oil terminals) — a typical technique of moral “equivalence.”

The Telegram channel Skurlatov Live (around 970,000 subscribers) expressed dissatisfaction with the Kremlin over the alleged “moratorium” on attacks against “decision-making centers” in Ukraine: “Why, after more than four years of the ‘special military operation,’ have there still been no strikes by the Russian Armed Forces aimed at destroying military-political decision-making centers and leaders of the ‘Ukro-fascist junta’ in Kyiv? Why did even the blood of 21 Russian children from a college in Luhansk, treacherously killed in their sleep by the ‘Ukro-Reich,’ remain unavenged?”

At the same time, calls for strikes on “decision-making centers” and complaints about Russia’s own leadership over the “moratorium” are standard rhetoric among that part of the propaganda pool demanding greater ruthlessness from the Russian authorities toward Ukrainians.

Parallel to the narrative of the “strike of retribution,” another storyline unfolded — that “the strikes benefit Zelenskyy.” For example, the channel Ze-Kartel reacted as follows: “The most revealing thing is how conveniently any new strike on Kyiv or any large attack once again wipes another topic off the agenda. Yesterday, everyone discussed wiretapping, connections, and money; today, everyone is once again obliged to look only at missiles and destruction. And any attempt to talk about corruption is immediately declared ‘inappropriate.’”

The channel Legitimny supplemented this same thesis with a prediction of a humanitarian catastrophe: “Zelenskyy wanted this, Zelenskyy got this. Now he’s doing PR, playing the role with a sad face... The catastrophe for civilians will grow because of the war. Energy, fuel, gas, water... People must understand that the war will intensify devastation.”

Thus, the narrative that “the strikes benefit Zelenskyy” is combined with the thesis about the necessity of capitulation.

Another direction of discussion on Telegram regarding the shelling of Kyiv was the dispute between those claiming that the strike was massive, effective, and devastating for the capital and Ukraine in general, and those who considered it insufficient and meaningless. Among the former were channels mainly engaged in reposting statements from the Russian Ministry of Defense. In their retransmissions, “all military targets struck were destroyed.” These included “facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, military infrastructure, command posts of the Ground Forces Command, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and other command posts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Among the allegedly “destroyed” targets they listed a metallurgical plant in Bila Tserkva, where FP-1 drones were supposedly assembled, as well as a nearby airfield “where French helicopters were based.”

The strike on Bila Tserkva became the subject of debate because, according to propagandists, it was there that the “Oreshnik” — an artifact of fundamental importance for Russian propaganda — was used. However, some propagandists, including the channel of the Russian neo-Nazi unit DShRG Rusich, mocked the results of the Russian “superweapon”: “One garage was destroyed, another damaged. A very good result for an intercontinental ballistic missile.”

Propagandist Anatolii Sharii also wrote about the garages, but added that they were located near the airfield that had been the real target of the strike. However, he noted that the airfield was effectively unused. Sharii sarcastically criticized the Russian Ministry of Defense for its target selection and propaganda framing of the attack: “If the strike on this critically important target is really worth what the ‘Oreshnik’ costs, and if this is indeed a very painful response to Kyiv for the students killed in the dormitory, then there are no questions. But it seems to me that the Russian Ministry of Defense itself has not yet figured out why this target was so important.”

In response to such criticism, propagandists closer to the Kremlin expressed outrage. Solovyov Live host Serhii Karnaukhov reposted a message from a smaller channel (20,000 subscribers), where Sharii was called “Ukrainian scum” for his comments. The author claimed that the “Oreshnik” is “a very specific weapon” that “does not require a warhead,” and that nobody knows the true results of its use. Yet even this post criticized the media support surrounding the strike and admitted that the version about expensive weapons wasted on garages or an unused airfield sounded more convincing: “The media effect has failed again. Completely failed. Fundamentally. They do not know how to conduct information warfare, much less mental warfare, and they do not want to learn.” The propagandist did not specify which of his associates he meant.

A widespread narrative in Russian Telegram channels was that the shelling failed to produce sufficient effect because missiles and drones once again did not hit the “decision-making centers” and leaders of the Ukrainian state and army. Ideologue and propagandist Aleksandr Dugin revived the worn-out Russian slogan from the fifth year of the full-scale war: “We haven’t even started yet.”

“A strange feeling after the nighttime strikes. This time it was powerful, but there are still no reports about the destruction of anything truly significant. Hanging over us like the sword of Damocles is ‘we haven’t even started yet.’ Even now it’s still ‘not yet.’ What has to happen for them finally to begin?” Dugin wrote.

Russian “war correspondent” Yurii Kotenok specified what propagandists considered “something significant” that should be destroyed. According to him, strikes with the “Oreshnik” and other weapons would not have the necessary effect or meaning until the “moratorium on eliminating the leaders of the Kyiv regime” was lifted. “Madyar (Brovdi), Flash, Budanov, Syrskyi, Zelenskyy, and another dozen leaders, primarily from the security bloc, must be eliminated,” Kotenok wrote.

Other propagandists reflected not on strikes against decision-making centers and leaders, but on the insufficient level of terror against civilians. The author of a channel with more than 100,000 subscribers wrote that he did not know whether the shelling of Kyiv had a sufficient military effect, but stressed the insufficiency of its social effect. He quoted Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev and his demands to “demoralize” Ukrainians, claiming that residents of Ukraine were still “quite cheerful and upbeat.”

“They have water, electricity, gasoline at gas stations, a Boombox concert in the square. As long as they have all this, as long as the railway system functions normally, as long as people in apartments in Novopecherski Lypky don’t have to run outside in the morning to dump excrement from buckets because the sewage system no longer works — they will not want to end the war with Russia here and now,” the author of the propaganda Telegram channel complained.

Another channel author with more than 300,000 subscribers (whose post was also reposted by other channels) reproached the organizers and executors of the shelling for the insufficient number of dead Kyiv residents. He posted photographs of the results of Iranian missile strikes in the Middle East and rhetorically asked: “Why did Iranian hypersonic weapons prove more effective than the ‘Oreshnik’ in terms of inflicting damage on the enemy?”

The reaction of some propagandists to the strike on Bila Tserkva was cautious — in case the “superweapon,” as in the previous two instances, failed to prove its effectiveness. The channel Sevastopol ChP wrote: “Strikes on military facilities in Kyiv... may have been carried out by the ‘Oreshnik.’ Explosions occurred 80 kilometers from Kyiv in the Bila Tserkva area... Judging by the videos, 6 blocks with 6 submunitions each landed — a total of 36 blanks.” The calculation of “36 blanks” later coincided with the Defence Express assessment. Later, the Russian Ministry of Defense also confirmed the use of this particular weapons system.

The channel ZeRada tried to play at “objective analysis,” combining formal recognition of military targets with Kremlin rhetoric about the need to kill Ukrainian military leadership: “We do not know what was destroyed as a result of the ‘Oreshnik’ strike on Bila Tserkva. If within a week there are no obituaries for Madyar’s deputies, then it was just an object.”

The channel Zvedennia, while simultaneously insisting that “all targets were hit,” published a detailed map of fires in Kyiv: the Artem plant, the headquarters of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, a military unit of the presidential regiment, the SBU office in Podil, the warehouse of the logistics company Chaika, where military and civilian sites were mixed together without distinction.[4]

The channel Medvedev’s News acknowledged the lack of destructive effect but advertised the “Oreshnik” as a weapon of the future: “‘Oreshnik’ hits one target three times. The public no longer experiences a ‘wow effect’... But for now, these are experimental trials of a relatively new strike system, whose effectiveness is still being assessed, while the product itself is being refined.”

The Kraken channel (more than 500,000 subscribers) promoted the thesis about the failure of air defense with direct aestheticization of the strike: “First of all, it’s beautiful. Secondly, judging by the consequences, it was the largest attack in the last year and a half. Thirdly, the Kyiv regime’s air defense is full of holes like Swiss cheese.”

Some propagandists admitted that the purpose of the strike was not the destruction of those same “decision-making centers,” but a humanitarian catastrophe for the capital. This thesis was spread, for example, by the channel Ostashko! Important: “Several missiles struck the Bortnychi aeration station — a key critical infrastructure facility responsible for wastewater treatment for all of Kyiv and part of the Kyiv region.”

The Telegram channel Novorossiya Militia Reports used the formula “the Ukraine testing ground,” repeating the rhetoric of Russian officials such as FSB Director Aleksandr Bortnikov, who frequently uses this wording: “The third use of our superweapon, which no air defense system in the world can intercept, predictably no longer causes the same emotions as the first one. But it must be understood that this is a new system still undergoing combat trials. Moreover, under real conditions of counteraction by NATO systems at the ‘Ukraine’ testing ground.”

Former Ukrainian TV host, propagandist, and collaborator Diana Panchenko built a narrative in her Telegram channel claiming that “Putin is protecting civilians,” ignoring dozens of injuries and widespread destruction of cultural infrastructure.

“90 missiles. 600 drones. Plus a missile that, in nuclear configuration, can carry 900 kilotons. 45 HIROSHIMAS!... 700 attack assets, including the possibility of a nuclear strike, and only 2 civilian deaths. Doesn’t this show that Putin is still protecting the Ukrainian civilian population?... Ukraine will disappear first. Either the war ends, or it will become much worse,” she wrote on her Telegram channel with an audience of more than 400,000 subscribers.

Dmytro Vasylets’s channel spread a fake claiming that people had allegedly “died from fragments of Western air defense missiles.”

“Klychko reported that there was only one fatality — and it was from a NATO air defense missile strike, because, as practice has shown, that is the main threat to civilians during strikes by the Russian Aerospace Forces.”

Another channel, Skosobochennyi, wrote about a shortage of missiles for Ukrainian air defense systems: “According to official data from the Ukrainian Air Force, not a single Kinzhal or Zircon missile was intercepted. Of the 30 ballistic Iskanders, only 11 were intercepted. The reason is practically no longer concealed: a shortage of missiles for American air defense systems. Against the backdrop of the war in the Middle East, a significant portion of U.S. resources has been redirected elsewhere.” It should be recalled that on May 27, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent an urgent letter to U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress regarding the critical shortage of interceptor missiles for Patriot PAC-3 systems.

The propaganda reaction to the condemnation of the Russian attack on Kyiv by world leaders was predictable: propagandists manipulated the situation by claiming that world leaders reacted more strongly to the attacks on Bila Tserkva and Kyiv than to the “murder of children” in Starobilsk.

“Von der Leyen accused Russia of ‘cruelty’... According to her, ‘terror against civilians is not a strength. It is desperation.’ Regarding the criminal AFU strike on the dormitory with children in Starobilsk, von der Leyen cynically remained silent,” propagandist Ruslan Ostashko wrote on Telegram.

Similar claims about the “cynicism” of Europeans appeared in 47 publications from the analyzed Telegram message dataset. Reactions were dismissed with phrases like: “‘Cluck-cluck-cluck.’ Europe’s reaction to the strike on Kyiv.” Or with epithets such as “lying animals.” And then accusations would inevitably follow, claiming that Europeans had either not reacted to civilian deaths in Starobilsk or had deliberately ignored the tragedy there while condemning Russia.

“Selective vision: European officials who demonstratively ignored the murder of Russian girls in Starobilsk suddenly became concerned about the safety of Kyiv residents,” the Telegram channel of the propaganda TV network Tsargrad wrote.

To assess Ukraine’s reactions to the Russian shelling, propagandists used a different approach. In 15 posts, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s reaction was described as “hysterical,” while his calls on Ukraine’s partners to increase pressure on Russia were belittled. Alongside the president’s name and surname, propagandists added labels such as “drug addict” or “expired,” intended to reinforce audience prejudice against Ukraine’s leadership. One of those using such derogatory epithets on Telegram was Dmitry Medvedev. He threatened Ukrainians with further attacks:

“The drug freak and his Banderite gang, through their terrorist strikes on children, provoked a harsh response from Russia... Which, of course, is important for it in the context of future elections in country 404. So what, should we stop striking altogether so as not to provoke the strengthening of the neo-Nazi regime? Of course not. We must strike, as today, and much harder! After all, ruins and gray ashes in place of their capital’s symbols demoralize the enemy no less than the loss of a battle flag.”

Both Russian propagandists, such as Oleksandr Kots, and officials expressed solidarity with Medvedev in demanding further attacks. In his Telegram channel, Kots wrote that “the nighttime missile-drone strike on Kyiv would be even more effective if stretched out over time and continued during the day, after which the damage inflicted could be assessed, and strikes carried out again and again.”

Russian media and propaganda Telegram channels spread quotes from collaborator and now Russian “diplomat” Rodion Miroshnik, claiming that Russia’s next attack should further correct the “arrogance” of Ukrainian politicians who do not inform the population about the state of Ukraine’s air defense. Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry once again promised — and even informed American diplomats — that Russia would strike “decision-making centers.”

Parallel to the intimidation campaign, Russians and propagandists promoted the statements of Ukrainian public figures who, after the Russian shelling, wrote about the need for “peace” or an end to hostilities. This time, they highlighted Maksym Buzhanskyi, a member of parliament from the Servant of the People party. Collaborator Oleh Tsaryov cited him as “a representative of another point of view” for the words, "We desperately need this war to end.” In the analyzed dataset, Buzhanskyi was mentioned eight times in total.

“The war must end. Peace, not missiles. On Sunday mornings, people should watch cartoons with their children, not clear rubble,” read a quote from Oleksii Honcharenko, a member of parliament from the European Solidarity faction, which appeared 40 times in the analyzed Telegram publication dataset.

Propagandists presented such statements as proof of the effectiveness of Russian strikes in influencing public opinion in Ukraine. At the same time, all these propagandists refuse to see Russia’s responsibility for the war, and for them “peace” means “Ukraine’s capitulation.”

The reaction to the shelling of Kyiv and the Kyiv region on May 24, 2026, is a vivid illustration of how Russian propaganda constructs not just one or two isolated narratives, but an entire dramaturgical cycle that allows it to switch between contradictory narratives without losing the overall framework. An analysis of 406 posts from 131 pro-Russian Telegram channels (with a combined subscriber audience of approximately 44.4 million) suggests that this was not a spontaneous reaction to a military event, but a well-developed template in which each element performs a specific function.

First, the thesis of the “strike of retribution” serves as a tool of legitimization. Approximately one day passes between Putin’s promise to “respond” to the strike on Starobilsk and the massive attack on Ukraine, during which the Telegram space is already mentioning the “Oreshnik” and preparing the audience for the idea that symbolic retaliation is a moral obligation. In Russian logic, a strike on the capital of another state is presented not as a matter of military expediency, but as a ritual act — and therefore supposedly not subject to evaluation by criteria of effectiveness.

Second, the thesis that “only military targets” were hit functions as obligatory rhetorical cover for actions that clearly go beyond that criterion. Strikes on the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the Chornobyl Museum, the October Palace, the Ukrainian House, the Kyiv Opera, the Yaroslav Mudryi National Library, and the Bortnychi aeration station are framed using the same formula as a strike on a military command headquarters. Moreover, some propagandists openly admit that the goal of the attacks is to force Kyiv residents to “leave the city en masse.”

Third, the internal dispute over the effectiveness of the “Oreshnik” — from the DShRG Rusich channel to Anatolii Sharii — demonstrates that even within Kremlin propaganda there is no consensus regarding the advisability of continuing strikes with this missile.