The Vengeance: Lesson Plan
A teaching guide for parents, teachers, and anyone reading the story with a curious child or student. Russia launched its largest single attack on Kyiv of the entire war on the night of Sunday 24 May 2026, using 90 missiles and 600 drones including a new intermediate-range ballistic missile called the Oreshnik. The most precise historical parallel is the German V-1 and V-2 vengeance-weapon attacks on London between June 1944 and March 1945. Both campaigns followed the same pattern: a regime that cannot win a long war deploys a novel and technologically unprecedented weapon against the enemy capital, more for psychological signalling than for military decisiveness. Both campaigns also produced the technological legacy that defined the next eighty years of warfare.
What the story is about
On the night of 23-24 May 2026, Russian forces launched 90 cruise and ballistic missiles and 600 attack drones at Kyiv and surrounding regions in a single coordinated wave-attack lasting over five hours. The Cabinet of Ministers building had its ground-floor windows blown out by a kinetic-impact air-blast. Twenty-eight residential apartment buildings in Kyiv were damaged or destroyed. The final count by Sunday evening was twelve dead and approximately 150 injured. President Zelensky confirmed that Russia used its Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile, hitting Bila Tserkva 80 kilometres south of Kyiv.
The Oreshnik (Russian for "hazel tree") is a Russian IRBM with reported Mach 10 speed and a multiple-reentry-vehicle payload, first deployed in combat on 21 November 2024 against Dnipro. It is the first intermediate-range ballistic missile used in combat since the INF Treaty era. Putin has framed it on Russian state television as a weapon that travels "like a meteorite" and is "immune to any missile defence system in the world."
The historical parallel: between June 1944 and March 1945, Nazi Germany launched the Vergeltungswaffen ("vengeance weapons") against London. The V-1 flying bomb began on 13 June 1944, one week after the D-Day landings. The V-2 ballistic missile, designed by Wernher von Braun, began on 8 September 1944, three months after D-Day. Together they killed approximately 9,000 British civilians. They did not change the trajectory of the war by a single day. Their actual strategic significance was that the V-2 was the world's first long-range ballistic missile and the technological ancestor of every ICBM since.
What the Vergeltungswaffen were
The Vergeltungswaffen were a family of long-range weapons developed in the late 1930s and 1940s by Nazi Germany. Their name was coined by the Reich Ministry of Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels, who began announcing them on German state radio in 1943 as the "wonder weapons" that would turn the war for Germany. By the time they were deployed in 1944 the strategic context had changed: Germany had lost Stalingrad (February 1943), had lost the Battle of Kursk (July 1943), had lost North Africa (May 1943), and was facing the Western Allies on its own western frontier after the Normandy landings. The Vergeltungswaffen could no longer credibly be described as war-winning weapons. They became, instead, the regime's projection of continued capability against an enemy capital.
The three principal vengeance weapons were:
V-1 (Fieseler Fi 103, the buzz-bomb, the doodlebug): a pulse-jet-powered flying bomb. It flew straight, low and slow at about 640 km/h. It could be intercepted by fast British fighters (Hawker Tempest, Gloster Meteor) and by anti-aircraft barrage guns. First operational use: 13 June 1944. Approximately 9,521 launched against the UK; about 2,419 reached London. Civilian deaths in Britain: approximately 6,184.
V-2 (Aggregat 4): the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. Liquid-fuelled (ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen), 14 metres tall, range approximately 320 kilometres, payload one-tonne high-explosive warhead. Reached the upper atmosphere at supersonic speed; its arrival was preceded by no warning sound at all. There was no possible defence against it. First operational use: 8 September 1944. Approximately 3,172 launched against the UK; about 1,402 reached London. Civilian deaths in Britain: approximately 2,754.
V-3 (Hochdruckpumpe, "high-pressure pump," the "London gun"): a 130-metre-long multi-charge supergun designed to fire 140 kg shells across the English Channel. Two batteries were built at Mimoyecques in the Pas-de-Calais but were destroyed by Allied "Tallboy" bombs in July 1944 before they ever fired on London.
What von Braun did before NASA
Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) was the technical director of the German Army's V-2 rocket programme from 1937 to 1945. He worked at the Peenemünde Army Research Center on the Baltic coast and at the underground Mittelwerk factory in the Kohnstein massif near Nordhausen. He was an SS officer (rank: Sturmbannführer). He visited the Mittelwerk factory many times and was therefore aware of conditions in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp that supplied its slave labour. He admitted in a 1969 interview that the Mittelwerk conditions were "repulsive." On 15 August 1944 he personally wrote to Albin Sawatzki, the V-2 production manager, confirming that he had visited Buchenwald to select slave labourers for the factory.
Approximately 60,000 prisoners passed through Mittelbau-Dora. At least 20,000 died of starvation, exhaustion, hangings and beatings. Approximately 10,000 of those deaths can be directly attributed to V-2 production. More slave labourers died building the V-2 than were killed by the V-2 as a weapon (10,000 vs 2,754).
In May 1945 von Braun and approximately 500 of his Peenemünde engineers surrendered to a US Army patrol in the Bavarian Alps. They were brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip, a programme designed to deny Nazi rocket expertise to the Soviet Union. Von Braun became a US citizen in 1955. He led the team that built the US Army's Redstone missile (1958), the Jupiter missile (1958), and the Saturn family of rockets. As the first director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (1960-1970), he led the development of the Saturn V launch vehicle that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon between 1969 and 1972. He died in 1977 a celebrated American hero. He was never charged with any war crime.
The Soviet equivalent was the team led by Sergei Korolev, who used captured V-2 documentation and the German engineers the Red Army acquired (most of the senior Peenemünde staff had gone west). The Soviet R-7 rocket designed by Korolev launched Sputnik on 4 October 1957 and Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961. Both the Apollo programme and the Soviet space programme are direct technological descendants of the V-2.
The Oreshnik in 2026
The Oreshnik is the operational name for a Russian intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that the Pentagon has identified as a variant of the previously-cancelled RS-26 Rubezh design. The reported specifications:
- Range: 1,000-5,500 kilometres (intermediate-range)
- Top speed: approximately Mach 10
- Payload: multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each reportedly with submunitions
- Class: until November 2024, this category of weapon had not been used in combat since the INF Treaty came into force in 1988
The Oreshnik was first deployed in combat against the Yuzhmash defence plant in Dnipro on 21 November 2024. Putin announced the launch in a televised address that night, framing it as the Russian response to United States and British permission for Ukraine to use ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside the Russian Federation. He described the weapon as one that travels "like a meteorite" and is "immune to any missile defence system in the world." It was the first IRBM-class weapon used in combat anywhere since the INF Treaty.
The 24 May 2026 Kyiv-region attack was the third operational deployment.
The pattern
Both the V-2 in 1944-45 and the Oreshnik in 2024-26 follow the same template:
| | V-1/V-2 1944-45 | Oreshnik 2024-26 | |---|---|---| | Regime's strategic position | Visibly losing | Stalled, not winning | | Weapon designation | "Vengeance Weapon" (Vergeltungswaffe) | "Hazel" (Oreshnik) | | First operational use | 13 June 1944 (V-1), 8 September 1944 (V-2) | 21 November 2024 | | Target type | Enemy capital, civilian centres | Enemy cities, military and civilian targets | | Stated rationale | Retaliation for Allied bombing of German cities | Retaliation for ATACMS/Storm Shadow use | | Strategic effect on the war | None (Germany lost on its existing trajectory) | Unclear (war still ongoing) | | Defence available | V-1 yes (fighters/AA), V-2 no | None | | Technological novelty | First long-range ballistic missile | First combat-used post-INF IRBM | | Technological legacy | Every ICBM since 1945; the Apollo programme; the Soviet space programme | TBD (eighty years of post-Oreshnik missile development) |
The political function in both cases is identical: a regime fighting a war it cannot decisively win deploys a novel weapon against the enemy capital to project continued capability, with no realistic prospect of changing the trajectory of the war itself. The strategic function in both cases is identical: the weapon's actual significance is the eighty-year technological aftermath, not the immediate civilian casualties.
Discussion questions
For an older student:
- Why is a weapon called "vengeance"? Goebbels named the V-weapons Vergeltungswaffen because Germany was retaliating for the British and American strategic bombing of German cities. Putin has named the Oreshnik strikes as retaliation for ATACMS and Storm Shadow strikes inside Russia. Is "vengeance" a useful framing for a weapon system, or is it propaganda that obscures the actual strategic calculation?
- The defence asymmetry. The V-1 could be intercepted by fighters; the V-2 could not. The Oreshnik is reportedly immune to any current air-defence system. What does it do to political decision-making on both sides when a weapon arrives that the defender cannot stop?
- The technology legacy question. The V-2 killed about 2,754 British civilians and produced the entire postwar nuclear-missile arsenal of both superpowers, plus the Apollo programme. What is the equivalent legacy projection for the Oreshnik? Is it the descendant nuclear-armed hypersonic vehicles of the 2050s? The Russian or Chinese moon landings of the 2060s?
- The slave-labour question. More people died building the V-2 than were killed by it. Von Braun knew, visited the Mittelwerk, was not prosecuted, and ended his career as a NASA hero. What is the equivalent moral accounting for the engineers of the Oreshnik? Russia operates penal labour in its defence-industrial complex; the conditions are not publicly comparable to Mittelbau-Dora but are not zero either. Who will judge them, and when?
- The end-of-war timing. The first V-1 hit London a week after D-Day. The last V-2 hit London six weeks before VE Day. The Vergeltungswaffen are an end-of-war weapon, a regime's last gesture before defeat. The Oreshnik was first used in November 2024 in the third year of a war that may have many years to run. What does the timing comparison tell us about where Russia thinks it is in the Ukraine war?
A note on the politics
Time Rhymes takes no position on the legitimacy of the underlying Ukraine war, the appropriate Western response, or the political character of either regime. The historical parallel is structural: a regime fighting a long war deploys a novel and technologically unprecedented weapon against an enemy capital. The 1944-45 case produced no change in the war's trajectory and an eighty-year technological legacy. The 2024-26 case is ongoing. The story exists to make the structural pattern visible.
Further reading
For older students or interested readers:
- Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (Smithsonian, 1995): the standard scholarly history of the V-2 programme.
- Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War (Knopf, 2007): the standard biography.
- A. D. Harvey, Arnhem (Cassell, 2001): chapter on V-2 production and the Mittelbau-Dora connection.
- Andre Sellier, A History of the Dora Camp: The Untold Story of the Nazi Slave Labor Camp That Secretly Manufactured V-2 Rockets (Ivan R. Dee, 2003): the Mittelbau-Dora survivor account.
- Russell Hardy and James Rogers, Russia's Hypersonic Weapons: Oreshnik and the New Missile Race (RUSI Occasional Paper, March 2026): the technical assessment of the Oreshnik in operational service.
- Time Rhymes will publish a follow-up if the Oreshnik is used against a NATO target, or if the Ukraine war ends, or if either occurs first.