A Russian missile attack overnight destroyed a Red Cross warehouse containing aid in Odesa. The Odesa regional organisation of the Red Cross society said workers and volunteers were not in the 1,000 sq metre unit at the time. “The provision of humanitarian aid and the activities of some projects of the Odesa Regional Organisation of the Red Cross of Ukraine have been suspended,” the statement added.
At least five people were wounded by Russian strikes on Kyiv, city officials said, as Moscow launched another large-scale attack on Ukraine. Three people were injured in blasts in Kyiv’s Solomyanskyi district and two others were injured when drone wreckage fell on to the Sviatoshyn district, both west of the capital’s centre, mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram messaging channel.
Russian artillery shelling wounded eight people, including a nine-year-old boy, in two villages in Kherson, regional officials said. Six civilians were wounded in the village of Stanislav on the right bank of the Dnipro estuary, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said, Reuters reports.
About 100,000 Russian soldiers have died in the battle to capture Bakhmut, a Ukrainian general has claimed. Col Serhiy Cherevaty, who is spokesperson for the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that they were “rough calculations” in an interview on Ukrainian TV. He said: “I am sure that further verification will only show an increase in this number. This is natural as the enemy uses the so-called meat assaults as the main method of waging war.”
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group appears to have ditched plans to withdraw from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, saying they had been promised more arms by Moscow. Ukraine’s general in charge of the defence of the besieged city said late on Sunday that Russia had intensified shelling and hoped to take Bakhmut by Tuesday, Victory Day in Russia, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war. Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi vowed to do everything he could to prevent it.
Russian investigators have charged a man with terrorism offences after a car bombing wounded a prominent Russian nationalist writer. The explosion in Nizhny Novgorod, western Russia on Saturday, broke both legs of Zakhar Prilepin, an ardent supporter of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine. His close associate, who was in the car with him, was killed. Alexander Permyakov was charged with committing a “terrorist act” and illegal handling of explosives, the prosecutor general’s office said in a statement, according to Reuters. Prilepin has written a description of the car bombing that killed his assistant and left him badly injured on Telegram, in his first comments since the attack on Saturday.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv on Tuesday, the European Commission announced.
The EU could impose penalties on countries helping Moscow dodge western sanctions as part of a drive to close loopholes in the regime of restrictions on the Russian economy. A draft EU regulation seen by the Guardian proposes that non-EU countries could be included in future sanctions if shown to be at “particularly high risk of being used for circumvention against Russia”.
A total of 1,679 people, including 660 children, have been evacuated from areas near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, a Moscow-installed official in the Russia-controlled parts of the Zaporizhzhia region has said. The head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog, Rafael Grossi, has warned that the situation around the plant has become “potentially dangerous” with Ukraine expected to start a much-anticipated counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory soon, including in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Zelenskiy marked the anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945 by saying he would formalise a day of remembrance in Ukraine on 8 May when other western countries celebrate Europe’s victory.
Russia’s population has declined by 2 million more than expected over the last three years, according to UK intelligence.
Nine Ukrainian explosives experts who were engaged in de-mining were killed in a single Russian attack in the southern Kherson region on Saturday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his latest evening address.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has threatened anyone convicted of carrying out Saturday’s attack on nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin with death in prison. Writing on Telegram, Medvedev, who is now deputy chair of Russia’s security council, said that any suspects, “like other criminals, will be tried for the attack and sentenced to long prison terms”. Prilepin, who was injured in a car explosion on Saturday, has been brought out of a medically induced coma, according to local officials.
Five people have been injured in a strike on the city of Balakliia, local authorities have said. Oleg Synegubov, the governor of eastern Kharkiv region, said on Telegram that a missile landed near a car park on Sunday.
Sixteen settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region were hit by a total of 75 strikes over the past day, according to the local military administration.
A 72-year-old woman has been killed and two people were injured by shelling in the southern Dnipro region, local officials said.
The number of Russian soldiers killed or injured since the start of the war stands at 193,430, according to the latest estimates from the Ukrainian military.
Russia’s population has declined by 2 million more than expected over the last three years, according to UK intelligence.
