The Kh-22 Missile Strike on a Residential Building in Dnipro, 14 January 2023

Key facts

Date of the event: 14 January 2023, around 3:30 p.m.
Location: a nine-story residential building, Naberezhna Peremohy 118, Dnipro, Ukraine
Casualties: 46 killed, including 6 children; at least 80 injured
Destruction: two entrances completely destroyed, 72 apartments obliterated, 236 damaged
Weapon: a Kh-22 cruise missile (NATO designation AS-4 Kitchen), warhead of about 950 kg
Delivery platform: a Tu-22M3 long-range bomber; on that day five Kh-22 missiles in total were launched at Ukrainian territory from five aircraft — from the Kursk region and the Sea of Azov

Timeline and substance of the event

On Saturday, 14 January 2023, Russia carried out another mass strike on Ukrainian territory. At around 3:30 p.m. one of the Kh-22 missiles hit a nine-story residential building at Naberezhna Peremohy 118 in Dnipro.

A Saturday afternoon is the time when a residential building is at its fullest: people are at home, children are not at school.

A warhead weighing about 950 kilograms detonated inside a residential building. Two entrances collapsed entirely — from the top floor to the basement. Seventy-two apartments were obliterated and another 236 damaged.

The clearing of the rubble went on for several days. The final confirmed death toll was 46 people, six of them children. At least 80 people were injured. In the first days, around eleven more people were listed as missing — their fates were later established during the clearing of the rubble.

This is one of the deadliest single strikes on a residential building in the entire full-scale invasion.

The weapon: why using the Kh-22 against a city is a crime in itself

The key to the legal assessment of this strike lies not in the question of “what they were aiming at,” but in the question of “what they fired.”

The Kh-22 is a heavy Soviet anti-ship missile developed in the 1960s. Its sole design purpose is to strike large surface targets, primarily carrier groups. Hence its characteristics:

Warhead ~950 kg — designed to disable a ship displacing tens of thousands of tonnes
Range up to 600 km
Supersonic cruise speed, with a steep dive on the terminal phase

The crucial point is accuracy. The Kh-22 homes in by radar on a large, high-contrast target in the open sea. Over land, in dense urban development, this guidance system does not work as intended. Ukraine’s Air Force and independent military analysts pointed out that when launched from long range, the deviation from the aim point runs to hundreds of metres.

From this follows a conclusion with direct legal consequences:

The use of a missile with an almost one-tonne warhead and a deviation of hundreds of metres against a target located in a residential district cannot be discriminate in principle. Regardless of what exactly they were aiming at, the striking of civilian objects with such a weapon is not a matter of chance but a guaranteed result.

This is precisely what makes the strike a violation of Article 51 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits indiscriminate attacks — including the use of methods and means of warfare whose effects cannot be limited as required.

In its analysis of 16 January 2023, the outlet Important Stories (IStories) described the weapon used outright as an “inaccurate and old missile”, the use of which against a populated area knowingly implies mass casualties.

Russia’s position

Moscow’s official reaction was built on denying authorship of the strike.

On 16 January 2023, the spokesperson for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, stated that the Russian armed forces do not strike residential buildings, and that the destruction of the building in Dnipro was linked to the operation of Ukrainian air defence.

This version gained unusually wide circulation — and here is why.

How the “Ukrainian air defence shot it down” version arose

What is distinctive about this episode is that the key claim of Russian propaganda originated not in Moscow.

On 14 January, the day of the strike, an adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Oleksiy Arestovych, suggested in a live broadcast that the missile had hit the building as a result of Ukrainian air defence — that is, that it had been shot down and fell onto the building. He stressed twice, however, that the version required verification.

What followed:

The Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine officially refuted this version, pointing out that Ukraine had no means at the time capable of shooting down missiles of the Kh-22 type.
On 16 January, Peskov publicly used Arestovych’s remark as confirmation of the Russian version.
On 17 January, Arestovych apologised and resigned from his position as adviser.

This episode is a textbook example of how propaganda works: a careless hypothesis, voiced by a single official on a live broadcast and retracted by that same official, was immediately turned into “an admission by the Ukrainian side” and is circulated to this day.

The evidence

1. Ukraine physically could not have shot down the Kh-22

This is the central technical argument, and it is not a matter of dispute between the sides — it is confirmed by the Ukrainian Air Force Command itself.

As of January 2023, Ukraine had no systems capable of intercepting Kh-22-type missiles. The Kh-22 approaches its target on a high-altitude trajectory at supersonic speed with a steep dive on the terminal phase — parameters beyond the reach of the Soviet-era air-defence systems that then formed the backbone of Ukrainian air defence.

Patriot systems, theoretically capable of engaging such targets, had not yet been delivered to Ukraine at the time of the strike — their transfer began later, in the spring of 2023.

Thus, the “it was shot down and fell on the building” version requires Ukraine to have possessed a capability that did not exist for it at that moment.

2. The nature of the destruction matches a warhead detonation, not falling debris

A downed missile falls onto a building as a mass of metal with residual fuel: the characteristic consequence is localised destruction, a fire, and damage to floor slabs at the point of impact.

In Dnipro, two entrances of a nine-story building were destroyed completely, from roof to foundation. This pattern of destruction matches the detonation of a warhead weighing about 950 kg inside the structure of the building.

3. Confirmation from British intelligence

The Defence Intelligence of the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed in its briefing that the residential building in Dnipro had been hit precisely by a Kh-22 missile — an assessment independent of Kyiv that coincides with the conclusions of the Ukrainian side.

4. The delivery platform and unit have been established

According to the Ukrainian side, five Kh-22 missiles were launched that day from five Tu-22M3 long-range bombers from the area of the Kursk region and the waters of the Sea of Azov. The launches are attributed to the 52nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

The Kh-22 is in service exclusively with Russia; Ukraine does not possess platforms of this missile type — which in itself rules out a Ukrainian origin of the munition.

5. Documentation of the aftermath

In March 2023, journalists from Meduza produced a detailed photo report on building No. 118, documenting what remained of the apartments and recording the testimony of survivors. The material establishes the strictly civilian character of the building: an ordinary Soviet-era apartment block with no military objects of any kind.

Debunking the propaganda

Myth: “The building was destroyed by Ukrainian air defence”

Refutation: as of January 2023, Ukraine had no means capable of intercepting the Kh-22 — this is the official position of the Ukrainian Air Force, not a value judgement. Patriot had not yet arrived in the country. Moreover, the nature of the destruction (the complete collapse of two entrances along their full height) matches a warhead detonation, not falling debris from a downed missile. The source of the version was Arestovych’s supposition, which he himself retracted and over which he resigned.

Myth: “They were aiming at a nearby military object, and an error occurred”

Refutation: even if one accepts this version, it does not remove responsibility but aggravates it. Choosing a weapon with a deviation of hundreds of metres and a 950-kg warhead to strike a target in a residential district is itself an indiscriminate attack within the meaning of Article 51 of Additional Protocol I. A party using such a weapon over a city knows in advance that the striking of civilian objects is inevitable.

Myth: “Russia does not strike residential buildings”

Refutation: the claim is refuted by the very fact of the Kh-22 being used against Ukrainian cities, documented repeatedly. A missile of the same type struck the Amstor shopping mall in Kremenchuk on 27 June 2022. This is not an isolated incident but a recurring pattern of using an anti-ship missile against civilian infrastructure.

Myth: “The death toll is exaggerated”

Refutation: the list of the dead is individualised — the names, ages, and circumstances of death of each of the 46 people are known. The clearing of the rubble was carried out publicly, with the participation of international media; bodies were recovered in the presence of journalists over the course of several days.

Legal qualification

Norms of international humanitarian law

Article 51(4) of Additional Protocol I — the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, including the use of means whose effects cannot be limited as required. The use of the Kh-22 against a target in urban development falls under this definition directly.
Article 51(2) — the prohibition of attacks on the civilian population as such.
Article 8(2)(b)(i–ii) of the Rome Statute — intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population and civilian objects as a war crime.

Investigations

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU) included the victims of the strike in its register of verified civilian casualties.
The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine opened proceedings under Article 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code (“Violation of the laws and customs of war”).
The episode is part of the general body of materials being submitted by the Ukrainian side to the International Criminal Court within the investigation of the situation in Ukraine.

The human dimension

On the nature of this section. Everything above is technology, law, and chronology. This section is about who was inside building No. 118 at 3:30 p.m. on a Saturday. All names, ages, and circumstances are drawn from Kyiv Independent, Ukrainska Pravda, NV, and war.ukraine.ua; the selection of stories reflects the author’s position.

“46 killed, including 6 children” is not an abstract tally. Behind every figure is a specific person, and behind the word “children” here — ages starting from one year.

The children

Under Ukrainian and international law, a child is a person under 18. The six children killed in this building:

Mykyta Zelensky, 1 year old — the youngest to die. His father, 28-year-old Oleksiy, was recovered from the rubble together with his son on 17 January. His mother, Kateryna, was pulled out alive — she had spent about twenty hours under the debris.
Makar Huz, eighteen months old — killed together with his mother Anastasiia and father Dmytro.
Mykhailyna Frantseva, 3 years old — and her sister Leila, 13, killed together with their mother Oksana (39). The children’s father and grandfather survived.
Mariia Lebid, 15 years old — a dance student; she was home alone at the moment of the strike.
Maksym Bohutskyi, 17 years old — a first-year student at Dnipro University of Technology.

Whole families

The missile with its 950-kg warhead, which folded the entrances from roof to basement, left no choice to those caught at the epicentre. People died — whole families:

the Huz family — father, mother, and eighteen-month-old Makar;
Oksana Frantseva with her two daughters;
father and son Zelensky — only the mother survived.

Those who had already fled this war

Among the dead were also people who had already fled the war once and thought they had finally reached safety.

Iryna and Maksym Shevchuk had moved to Dnipro from Nikopol six months before the strike — a city that the Russian army methodically shelled across the Dnipro from occupied territory. They fled the war to what they believed was the safer regional capital. On 14 January the missile caught up with them there too. Both were killed. Their two children survived — 14-year-old Karolina and 9-year-old Tymur: a few minutes before the strike they had gone outside to wait for their parents.

Ordinary lives

Those killed were the people any residential building is made of:

Mykhailo Korenovskyi, 39 — an Honoured Coach of Ukraine, head coach of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast boxing team. He lived on the top floor — where the strike hit.
Iryna Salamatenko, 39 — a dentist, killed three days after her birthday; two children, aged 6 and 14, were orphaned. Killed together with her was her friend and colleague Olha Usova.

About 400 people were left homeless. Eleven of the dead could not be identified for several more days.

None of them was a soldier. Not one of these people was anywhere near a military object. They were simply civilians of Ukraine.

Conclusion

Building No. 118 on Naberezhna Peremohy was an ordinary residential building of no military significance. It was struck by an anti-ship missile with a warhead of about 950 kilograms and a deviation of hundreds of metres.

The Russian version about the operation of Ukrainian air defence is refuted technically: Ukraine had no means of intercepting the Kh-22 in January 2023, and the nature of the destruction matches a warhead detonation rather than falling debris from a downed missile. The source of this version was a careless supposition by a Ukrainian official, which was retracted and over which its author resigned — but which Moscow managed to turn into the basis of its position.

Legally, the key question is not the point of aim, but the choice of weapon itself. Using the Kh-22 over a city makes the striking of civilian objects not a risk but a certainty. This is the very definition of an indiscriminate attack — one of the gravest violations of international humanitarian law.

Legal status

Body	Status	Details
Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine	Criminal proceedings	Art. 438 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code — violation of the laws and customs of war
UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU)	Victims verified	Included in the register of confirmed civilian casualties
International Criminal Court	Within the body of materials on the situation in Ukraine	No separate warrant issued for the episode
UK intelligence	Use of the Kh-22 confirmed	Confirmation of the munition type independent of Kyiv

Case timeline

Date	Event
14.01.2023, ~3:30 p.m.	The Kh-22 hits the building at Naberezhna Peremohy 118. Two entrances destroyed
14.01.2023, evening	Presidential Office adviser Oleksiy Arestovych floats the Ukrainian-air-defence version on air
15.01.2023	The Ukrainian Air Force Command refutes the version: there are no means to intercept the Kh-22
16.01.2023	Dmitry Peskov links the building’s destruction to Ukrainian air defence
17.01.2023	Arestovych apologises and resigns
January 2023	UK Defence Intelligence confirms the use of the Kh-22
January 2023	The clearing of the rubble is completed: 46 killed, including 6 children
March 2023	Meduza publishes photo documentation of building No. 118 and survivor testimony