The missiles were a shock in this western Ukrainian city spared from much of the war, a place so far from the front lines it does not even have a curfew. When the mayor heard the first strike, he thought it was thunder.
But the target and timing of the cruise missiles were even more surprising. They hit a factory run by an American multinational, best known for making coffee machines, six days after President Donald Trump met President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Alaska to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
"Two hits in one location?" asked Andriy Baloha, the mayor of Mukachevo. "No, they didn't mess up. They knew exactly where they were hitting."
Striking American and European assets, analysts and government officials said, sent a confrontational message: Putin feels empowered to rebuff pressure to make peace, to wage war as he sees fit, and even to inflict pain on the West in the process.
Trump has been calling for direct peace talks between Putin and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, while European countries are discussing what security guarantees to provide Ukraine. The Kremlin has dismissed negotiations as premature and Western security guarantees as unacceptable.
"Russia is now striking at everyone in the world who seeks peace," Zelensky said.
Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles on Thursday at Kyiv, the capital, killing at least 25 people in the deadliest civilian strikes since Trump met with Putin.
"Putin is very cautious, and what he does has a certain goal," said Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian Parliament. Striking Western targets, he added, is "a clear signal from him that he feels confident, and that he is waging the war not only against Ukraine but also against the West".
After the attack in Mukachevo, Trump said that he was "not happy" with it and that he had expressed his displeasure to Putin. After the attack in Kyiv, Trump was also "not happy", said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. But that has been the extent of the American response; the President's threats of additional sanctions against Russia have remained only threats.
"The escalation reflects Moscow's calculated assessment that it can impose costs on Western support without triggering direct military retaliation," said Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst based in Vienna.
"Russia is effectively testing the boundaries of Western deterrence while pursuing a broader coercive strategy aimed at weakening allied resolve and forcing Ukraine towards unfavourable negotiating positions," he added.
Among other measures, Europe is debating sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
The message from Moscow is "don't you dare send your troops here, because Ukraine is somewhere we can strike anywhere we like," said Volodymyr Dubovyk, the director of the Centre for International Studies at Odesa I.I. Mechnikov National University.
A new minerals deal signed in the spring between the US and Ukraine aims to attract American investors to Ukraine — which American leaders have suggested could be its own kind of security guarantee. But it's unclear how American companies would be protected from future Russian attacks.Just over half of American companies in Ukraine have been damaged in Russian strikes.
The Russian ministry of defence said its strikes in Mukachevo targeted "enterprises of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex". Foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia initially claimed to NBC News that he had "never heard about" the attack on the Flex plant but also that Russia "does not target civilian facilities".
New York Times News Service