Russia tells US to evacuate its diplomats and citizens from Kyiv

Bloomberg News on May 26, 2026

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov advised U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to evacuate U.S. citizens and diplomats from Kyiv as the Kremlin plans to continue heavy strikes on the Ukrainian capital, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said.

Lavrov called his U.S. counterpart at the request of President Vladimir Putin to tell him that Russia is launching systematic and consistent strikes against facilities in Kyiv as well as relevant “decision-making centers,” according to the statement published late Monday.

The State Department said the two men spoke at Lavrov’s request. “The parties exchanged views on the Russia-Ukraine war, bilateral relations, and the situation in Iran,” department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

In an earlier statement on Monday, the Kremlin urged all foreign nationals, including staff of diplomatic missions and representatives of international organizations, to leave Kyiv as soon as possible and advised residents of the Ukrainian capital to stay away from military and administrative infrastructure.

European Union ambassador to Kyiv Katarina Mathernova dismissed Russia’s warning as “a sign of desperation” and said western diplomats were not planning to relocate. “The E.U. is not going anywhere. We are staying in Kyiv,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

Russia has bombed Ukrainian cities including Kyiv regularly since Putin ordered the February 2022 full-scale invasion. On Sunday, Ukraine came under a massive Russian drone and missile barrage that included an Oreshnik ballistic missile, in what Moscow framed as retaliation for a Ukrainian drone attack on a college in the Russia-occupied Luhansk region that killed 21 students.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces hit the headquarters of a Russian drone unit operating in Starobilsk and it rejected Putin’s allegation that civilian facilities were hit.

Russia’s threats to Kyiv aren’t anything new given the constant strikes against the capital throughout the war, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhiy Tykhyi said on X on Monday.

On the call with Rubio, Lavrov also accused Europe and Ukraine of undermining agreements that Putin reached with U.S. President Donald Trump during the 2025 summit in Alaska, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The two men also discussed the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and the situation surrounding Cuba, it said.

Trump returned to the White House in January last year pledging to bring a rapid end to Europe’s worst conflict since World War II. More than 16 months of diplomacy have failed to reach a breakthrough.

As Bloomberg has reported, the U.S. had said it would push for Ukraine to relinquish the eastern Donbas region consisting of Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk provinces, if Moscow agreed to freeze the conflict along existing lines and drop claims to Ukrainian-controlled parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

All those regions are internationally recognized as Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Ukraine has rejected calls to surrender territory in Donetsk that Russia has failed to conquer in fighting dating back to 2014.

Rubio has recently spoken very pessimistically about prospects to reach a deal to end the war in Ukraine any time soon.

“There doesn’t appear to be anybody else in the world right now that can handle it,” he told reporters on May 22. “So we’re more than happy to do that if the opportunity presents itself to have constructive and productive talks. We’re also not interested in getting involved in an endless cycle of meetings that lead to nothing.”