Russia fired hypersonic missiles at Ukraine in a revenge attack which killed at least 16 people and injured 100 others.

In one of the largest aerial assaults of the war, as many as eight Zircon hypersonic missiles were launched, with Ukraine unable to intercept a single one.

The anti-ship missile, which Russia claims can travel at Mach 9 (6,900mph), has previously been described by Vladimir Putin as “invincible”.

In total, 73 missiles and 656 drones were fired just hours after Putin vowed to respond to a drone attack ⁠on a student dormitory in Russian-held Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, which killed 21 people.

Kyiv said it was targeting the headquarters of the elite Russian drone unit “Rubicon” in the incident. Independent verification has been impossible because access to occupied Luhansk is tightly controlled by the Russian authorities.

The sweeping strikes came hours after Putin repeated last week’s warnings by his top officials that Moscow would intensify its bombardments of the Ukrainian capital, and commence “systematic” assaults.

Last night, Putin claimed: “The Kyiv leadership decided to open a new chapter in its string of crimes, to change the nature of the conflict fundamentally.”

The scale of Tuesday’s assault was similar to the two previous mass bombardments last month. Moscow has ratcheted up its attacks on the capital this spring as Ukraine has expanded its highly publicised long-range drone strike campaign on Russian soil.

Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, countered Russia’s claims by saying that the “only reason” for the overnight strikes was that “Putin is a war criminal and loser who has no cards except terror”.

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