Kyiv braces for ‘massive’ Russian strike after Putin says Ukrainian attack on Starobilsk dorm changed war’s ‘nature’

Russian President Vladimir Putin convened a meeting to discuss the investigation into Ukraine’s strike on a college building in the city of Starobilsk in the occupied Luhansk region.

Putin said: “It appears that, in deliberately — and quite consciously — committing the gravest crime against children, teenagers, at the teachers’ college in Starobilsk […] the Kyiv leadership decided to open a new chapter in its string of crimes, to change the nature of the conflict fundamentally as a whole. Well, that is their choice.”

He then ended the public portion of the meeting and moved into a closed session.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been warning Ukrainians since May 29 about the possibility of a massive new Russian strike. In his evening address on June 1, he repeated the warning, saying that Russia had prepared a massive strike, that such an attack was possible, and that Ukraine’s air defenses were on round-the-clock alert, as far as supplies allow.

In the early hours of May 22, Ukrainian forces struck the city of Starobilsk in the occupied Luhansk region, partially destroying buildings at a local college. Twenty-one people between the ages of 18 and 21 were killed.

In the early hours of May 24, Russia launched a large-scale strike on Kyiv and the surrounding region. An Oreshnik missile was used for the third time since the start of the war. Two people were killed and more than 80 were wounded.