A summary of today's developments
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 adds.
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.”
Ukraine’s largest steel producer, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, said that it had told staff to take Tuesday off or work remotely because of the threat of Russian air strikes. The company, which employs about 20,000 people is located in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown, often the target of Russian drone and missile attacks, Reuters reported.
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, which is Victory Day in Russia, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war. Col Gen 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.
Operations at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are being suspended in case of “provocations” by Ukrainian forces, the TASS state news agency reported.Ukraine is expected to initiate a counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory, including potentially in the Zaporizhzhia region and Russian authorities have begun evacuating people.
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.
President 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.
NATO air policing units were put on a higher state of readiness following a near-miss between a Russian fighter jet and a Polish aircraft on patrol for the EU’s border agency Frontex on Friday, a NATO official said.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official told Reuters: “NATO air policing detachments were put on higher readiness in response to the dangerous behaviour of a Russian military plane in the vicinity of a Polish Frontex aircraft over the Black Sea near Romania.”
The official said NATO “remains vigilant” and referred further questions to the Polish authorities.
Operations at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are being suspended in case of “provocations” by Ukrainian forces, the TASS state news agency reported.
Ukraine is expected to initiate a counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory, including potentially in the Zaporizhzhia region and Russian authorities have begun evacuating people.
TASS quoted Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed governor, as saying: “We’ve seen the level (of water in the nearby Kakhovka Reservoir) rise to 17.8 metres.
“We realise that this is manipulation. The nuclear reactors have been suspended.”
Ukraine’s largest steel firm tells staff to take Tuesday off or work remotely over safety fears
Ukraine’s largest steel producer, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih, said that it had told staff to take Tuesday off or work remotely because of the threat of Russian air strikes.
The company, which employs about 20,000 people is located in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s hometown, often the target of Russian drone and missile attacks, Reuters reported.
A spokesperson said the measure reflected “the escalation of enemy attacks throughout the country and the downing of a reconnaissance drone in Kryvyi Rih, on Saturday.
Moscow has intensified air strikes this month as Ukraine prepares to launch a counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion.
It has also vowed to retaliate after blaming Kyiv for an apparent drone attack on Moscow’s Kremlin citadel, for which Ukraine denied responsibility.
In Odesa, flames engulfed what the Ukrainian Red Cross said was a 1,000 sq m food warehouse that it was operating.
It said all the humanitarian aid stored there had been destroyed, Reuters reports.
After air raid alerts blared for hours over roughly two-thirds of Ukraine, local media said explosions sounded in the southern region of Kherson and southeastern Zaporizhzhia.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in Zaporizhzhia, said Russian forces hit a warehouse and Ukrainian troops’ position in the small city of Orikhiv.
The Russian-appointed governor, Yevgeny Balitsky, said around 3,000 civilians had been evacuated from areas near the front line that had come under shelling in Zaporizhzhia, one of the areas where Ukraine could launch its counteroffensive.
Ukraine’s ministry of defence has shared a photo of a missile attack in Odesa.
A missile attack last night destroyed the Red Cross Society's warehouse in Odesa. A civilian security guard was killed. Hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid for Odessa residents were destroyed. russia's priority target is civil objects. After all, terror is their strategy. pic.twitter.com/py68zG38bg
— Defense of Ukraine (@DefenceU) May 8, 2023
Summary
The time is approaching 6pm in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Here’s a roundup of today’s news as Russian forces destroyed a Red Cross warehouse in Odesa as part of a wave of strikes that hit several parts of Ukraine.
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 adds.
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, which is Victory Day in Russia, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war. Col Gen 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.
President 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.
Updated
Rocket attack destroys Red Cross aid warehouse
A Russian missile attack overnight destroyed a Red Cross warehouse in Odesa.
The Odesa regional organisation of the Red Cross society said the 1,000 sq metre unit contained humanitarian aid. In a statement it said that workers and volunteers were not in the building 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 adds.
Updated
Military call-ups are making the most important times of the arable calendar – the sowing and harvesting seasons – even tougher in Ukraine, Reuters reports.
The agency has spoken to Kees Huizinga, a Dutch farmer in the Cherkasy region of central Ukraine, who has seen about 40 of his 350 workers sign up to fight in the war, with their replacements lacking experience. Reuters says Huizinga fears this could mean a fall in grain and milk yields – and, with them, a drop in his income.
Three other farmers, a major farm operator and an agrarian association told the agency the military call-ups were affecting them too. They said assessing the impact of staff shortages on output is all but impossible – but just another complication in an already difficult campaign.
Ukraine’s grain output – for a long time a driver of its export revenues and of global grain markets – is already down sharply because of a war that has disrupted exports, reduced access to fertilisers and made huge swathes of farmland inaccessible. Steps by Kyiv to ringfence the key agriculture sector from the military draft have had only a limited impact, Reuters reports.
Most of the farming sources the agency spoke to said they could get by with replacement workers and employees doubling up on some jobs, but that nothing replaces experience. Huizinga said:
You lose some efficiency there. You lose the quality.
The 48-year-old, who comes from near the Dutch city of Groningen and moved to Ukraine drawn by its cheaper land prices, said the losses could run to a few hundred thousand dollars or more for his farm.
On his 15,000 hectares of land, he has milking cattle, plus young stock, and grows a variety of vegetable and grain crops, having withstood unpredictable weather and price fluctuations among other challenges over the years.
Updated
Kyiv’s mayor says Russia fired 60 Iranian-made kamikaze drones at Ukrainian targets, including 36 at the capital, all of which were shot down. However, he said debris hit flats and other buildings, injuring at least five people on the ground.
Updated
Russian artillery shelling wounded eight people, including a nine-year-old boy, in two villages in Ukraine’s southern region of Kherson on Monday, 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.
Two others were hurt in Antonivka, on Kherson’s outskirts, said military administration chief Roman Mrochko.
The two people in Antonivka had been near one of the many “invincibility points” that Ukraine set up nationwide to provide access to electricity, heating, water and other basic services for civilians facing outages caused by Russian airstrikes.
Ukrainian troops recaptured the city of Kherson last November after nearly eight months of occupation by Russian forces who seized it soon after launching their full-scale invasion.
The area now comes under frequent artillery fire from Russian forces dug in on the opposite side of the Dnieper River.
Updated
Russia has effectively stopped the Black Sea grain deal by refusing to register incoming vessels, Ukraine’s reconstruction ministry has said.
“The Russian Federation once again effectively stopped the ‘grain initiative’ by refusing to register incoming vessels and carry out their inspections. This approach contradicts the terms of the current agreement,” the ministry said in a statement according to Reuters.
Ukraine alleges Russia has lost 100,000 soldiers in battle for Bakhmut
About 100,000 Russian soldiers have died in the battle to capture Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, 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.”
Cherevaty said that Russia had launched about 415 artillery strikes in the last 24 hours. He added that 64 Russian soldiers were killed on Sunday.
Cherevaty also said that Russia did not seem to be low on ammunition, despite claims to the contrary by the head of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
“Such statements by the Wagner group leader are most likely connected with the fact that he made too many promises about the capture of Bakhmut and invents this nonsense about ammo shortage since, apart from manpower losses, he has no other ‘victories.’”
Updated
Man charged with car bombing that injured Kremlin-supporting writer
Russian investigators have charged a man with terrorist offences after a car bombing wounded a prominent Russian nationalist writer.
The explosion on Saturday in Nizhny Novgorod, western Russia, 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.
A court remanded him in custody for two months.
Russia’s foreign ministry has accused Ukraine and the western states of backing it, particularly the US, for the attack.
Ukraine’s security services neither confirmed nor denied involvement. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he believed Russian authorities staged the attack.
The US state department has not commented on the incident.
Russia’s state news agency TASS quoted security sources as saying the suspect was a “native of Ukraine” with a past conviction for robbery with violence.
Prilepin was the third prominent pro-war figure to be targeted by a bomb since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia also blamed Ukraine for the deaths of journalist Darya Dugina and war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in the two previous attacks. Kyiv has denied involvement.
Updated
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv on Tuesday, the European Commission announced on Monday.
The visit on Europe Day reaffirms “the EU’s unwavering support towards the country”, a spokesperson for the European Commission told reporters.
“The visit will focus on all the dimensions of our relations with Ukraine,” he added.
Updated
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”. This would mean imposing restrictions on the sale of certain goods to that country if it was believed they were being re-exported to Russia.
The plans, which will be subject to intense discussion from EU member states, could yet be watered down amid concern about pushing sanction-targeted countries into the arms of the Kremlin.
Since the EU and western allies imposed heavy sanctions on the Russian economy after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the bloc’s exports to its eastern neighbour have fallen sharply. But EU trade with former Soviet countries in the Caucasus and central Asia has jumped, as have some of these countries’ onward exports to Russia – a process called “the Eurasian roundabout” by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has studied the issue. At the same time, Turkey and China have also increased their sales to Russia.
EU diplomats are wary of antagonising these countries and pushing them closer to Russia, but there is also understanding that the continued flow of exports is blunting the impact of western sanctions.
The issue is the centrepiece of the EU’s 11th round of sanctions against Russia, which otherwise contains few substantial measures. Some EU diplomats argue the EU has little left to sanction, with contentious issues – such as a ban on Russian diamonds and civil nuclear technology – too difficult to agree among the 27 member states.
The EU also wants to impose personal sanctions – asset freezes and travel bans – on a further 72 people and 29 organisations deemed to be supporting the war effort. On the draft list are people putting out the Kremlin line on state TV, those responsible for the transportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and two commanders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, who were recently found guilty in absentia by a Dutch court for the murder of 298 people on board Flight MH17 in 2014, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine.
Updated
Russian forces are moving members of the local authority, collaborators, children and teachers from the city of Tokmak in Zaporizhzhia to the city of Berdiansk, which is also under Russian control.
Parents have been told not to enrol the children into schools if they have refused the evacuation order, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s daily update.
Meanwhile, queues for petrol are in place, with drivers in Tokmak told that no new deliveries are planned.
Updated
Volodymyr 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.
Speaking to the nation on a hill overlooking Kyiv, Zelenskiy compared Putin’s Russia to Hitler’s Germany, saying the Kremlin was pursuing “enslavement and destruction”, as the Nazis did, Reuters reports. He said Russia would not succeed.
Further cementing Ukraine’s break with its Soviet past, Zelenskiy said he had submitted a bill to parliament officially making 8 May a day of remembrance and victory, while 9 May – when Russia marks Victory Day – would become Europe Day.
“We are returning to our state an honest history without ideological influences. It is on 8 May that most nations of the world remember the greatness of the victory over the Nazis,” he said in a video posted on the president’s Telegram channel.
“Today, I signed the relevant decree, and every year from tomorrow, 9 May, we will commemorate our historic unity – the unity of all Europeans who destroyed Nazism and will defeat Ruscism,” he said, using a word Ukrainians have coined to describe what they call Russian fascism.
Updated
About eight Kh-22 cruise missiles were fired by Russia at Odesa overnight according to Ukraine’s air force spokesperson.
Yurii Ihnat said that “some of them did not reach their targets”, the Kyiv Independent reported, as Ihnat spoke on television. He said that they were older Soviet missiles.
Despite their apparent age, Russia used the same missile in an attack that hit a residential building in Dnipro on 14 January, killing 40 civilians and injuring over 70.
Ukraine’s air force earlier reported that Russian forces had attacked Odesa using Tu-22 M3 long-range bombers from Cape Tarkhankut in Russian-occupied Crimea.
The warehouse of a food company and a recreational area on the Black Sea coast were hit, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa military administration. No casualties were reported.
Updated
Russian military recruiters have been targeting central Asian migrant workers in Russia to serve in Ukraine, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update.
Recruiters have visited mosques and immigration offices to recruit. At immigration offices, staff who speak Tajik and Uzbek routinely attempt to recruit migrants.
Radio Free Europe reported recruiters offering sign-up bonuses of USD $2,390 and salaries of up to USD $4,160 a month. Migrants have also been offered a fast-track Russian citizenship path of six months to one year, instead of the usual five years.
The high monthly salary and sign-up bonuses will entice some migrant workers to sign up. These recruits are likely sent to the Ukrainian frontlines where the casualty rate is extremely high.
Recruiting migrants is part of the Russian ministry of defence’s attempts to fulfil its target of 400,000 volunteers to fight in Ukraine.
The authorities are almost certainly seeking to delay any new overt mandatory mobilisation for as long as possible to minimise domestic dissent.
Updated
More photos have emerged of the damage done after Russia launched drone strikes on Kyiv overnight:
Russia appears to have ramped up its attacks on Ukraine ahead of its annual Victory Day parade in Moscow on Tuesday, which marks the anniversary of Soviet Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945.
The celebration has gradually emerged as the centrepiece of Vladimir Putin’s vision of Russian identity over his 23 years in charge.
But this year there are signs of unease among the Russian leadership over the celebrations amid fears of Ukrainian strikes, the Guardian’s Pjotr Sauer reports from Moscow, after drones operated by unknown people attacked the Kremlin last week.
“There is a nervousness that I have never seen before,” said one official at the Moscow mayor’s office. “But Victory Day has to go ahead, there is no other option.”
Updated
Some images of the damage from last night’s strikes on Ukraine, in which five people were injured in Kyiv.
A bit more from the ISW update I posted about earlier. The thinktank’s analysts argue that the latest spat between Wagner and the Russian ministry of defence shows that army Gen Valery Gerasimov, overall campaign commander in Ukraine, and possibly minister of defence Sergei Shoigu “lack the ability to command [Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov as subordinates but must instead negotiate with them as peers”.
The ISW writes further:
Gerasimov’s degraded abilities to control his commanders will likely further limit the Russian military’s ability to conduct coherent operations involving different areas of responsibility …
ISW has previously assessed that factional dynamics within the Russian military are shaping decision-making to an unusual degree, and the increasing erosion of the Russian chain of command is likely caught in a self-reinforcing feedback loop with the Russian military’s growing factionalism.
ISW assesses that Putin is unlikely to remove Gerasimov as overall theatre commander for reputational reasons, and therefore Prigozhin’s and Kadyrov’s public undermining of Gerasimov may have lasting impacts on the power of the overall theatre commander’s position.
Updated
Prominent pro-Kremlin writer Zakhar Prilepin has written a description of the car bombing that killed his assistant and left him badly injured, in his first comments since the attack on Saturday.
Writing on Telegram on Sunday, the Russian nationalist said he had been driving and that his assistant was in the passenger seat when the bomb blew up under his assistant’s wheel. Prilepin said he had dropped his daughter off just five minutes before the explosion.
“I tell the demons: you will not intimidate anyone. God exists. We will win,” he added at the end of his post.
Russia launches fresh wave of strikes across Ukraine with civilians feared among the dead and wounded
Ukraine says it destroyed all 35 Iranian-made Shahed drones launched by Russia in a wave of attacks across the country early Monday.
In its usual morning update the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said Russia had also launched 16 missile strikes on cities and regions including Kharkiv, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa as well as 61 airstrikes. It also reported 52 instances of enemy shelling and said “Unfortunately, there are killed and wounded among civilians, damaged high-rise building, private residences and other civilian infrastructures.”
“The probability of further Russian missile and air strikes across Ukraine remains high,” it added.
Updated
We’re going to pause the blog here for a couple of hours but will of course return to bring you any breaking news.
Here are the latest developments:
Five people have been injured in Kyiv after Russia launched a fresh wave of drone and missile strikes on Ukraine in the early hours of Monday. Two of those were wounded when drone wreckage fell on a two-storey building in the city’s west, while drone debris also fell on the runway at the city’s the Zhuliany airport.
Explosions were also reported in the Black Sea city of Odesa, where Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, said a food warehouse and a recreation area had been set on fire. Further Russian strikes were also reported in Zaporizhzhia and in the southern region of Kherson.
Russian Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to have ditched plans to withdraw from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, saying he has 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.
Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov “likely effectively blackmailed” Russia’s Ministry of Defence into allocating Wagner more resources, the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest assessment of the conflict. Kadyrov was happy to help Prigozhin in order to reestablish his position within the circle of power in the Kremlin, it argued.
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.
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 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to UK intelligence.
Updated
More from that ISW report I mentioned earlier: the analysis suggests that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov was happy to help Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin “blackmail” the Russian defence ministry in order to reestablish his position within the circle of power in the Kremlin. The think tank writes:
Kadyrov had previously held an influential position within … Putin’s close circle … until apparently losing favor recently, likely because his forces played a limited role in active combat operations in Ukraine throughout late fall of 2022 and winter of 2023.
Putin belittled Kadyrov during their meeting on March 13 where Kadyrov appeared visibly nervous when reporting on the Chechen fighters’ role in Ukraine.
Kadyrov likely saw Prigozhin’s threats to withdraw from Bakhmut as an opportunity to play up the effectiveness of his forces against the backdrop of Gerasimov’s and Shoigu’s failures to deliver decisive victories during the winter-spring offensive.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed local official in Zaporizhzhia, said that Russian forces overnight also hit a warehouse and Ukrainian troops’ position in Orikhiv, a small city in the region, Reuters reported. The news wire was not able to independently verify the report.
Russia has launched a string of missile and drone attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, killing dozens of people across the country.
Targets have included civilian areas: eight people died in a supermarket in Kherson last week and 23 people, including a baby boy, were killed in the city of Uman when a Russian missile struck an apartment block at the end of April.
Russian missiles were also aimed at Odesa, hitting a food warehouse and a “recreation area”, according to Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa military administration.
He wrote on Telegram:
X-22 rockets were directed at the warehouse of one of the food enterprises and at the recreation area on the Black Sea coast.
Rescuers are working to eliminate fires. There was no information about the victims. The information is being clarified.
More detail on the strikes on Kyiv from Reuters, which reports:
Three people were injured in blasts in Kyiv’s Solomyanskyi district and two others were injured when drone wreckage fell onto the Sviatoshyn district, both west of the capital’s centre, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on his Telegram messaging channel.
The Kyiv’s military administration said that drone wreckage fell on a runway of the Zhuliany airport, one of the two passenger airports of the Ukrainian capital, causing no fire, but emergency services were working on the site.
It also said that in Kyiv’s central Shevchenkivskyi district, drone debris seemed to have hit a two-storey building, causing damages. There was no immediate information about potential casualties.
Reuters’ witnesses said they had heard numerous explosions in Kyiv, with local officials saying that air defence systems were repelling the attacks. It was not immediately clear how many drones were launched on Kyiv.
Wagner boss Prigozhin abandons threat to withdraw from Bakhmut
The ISW analysis comes after Reuters reported that Wagner group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had ditched his plans to withdraw from the eastern city of Bakhmut on Sunday after receiving promises that his fighters would receive as much ammunition as they needed. Prigozhin wrote on Telegram:
Overnight we received a combat order, for the first time in all this time. We have been promised as much ammunition and weapons as we need to continue further operations. We have been promised that everything needed to prevent the enemy from cutting us off [from supplies] will be deployed on the flank.
Prigozhin had announced on Friday that his fighters, who have spearheaded the months-long assault on Bakhmut, would pull out because he said his men had been starved of ammunition and taken “useless and unjustified” losses as a result.
Updated
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov “likely effectively blackmailed” Russia’s Ministry of Defence into allocating Wagner more resources, the Institute for the Study of War has said in its latest assessment of the conflict.
The US-based think tank writes:
Kadyrov published a letter on May 6 asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to order Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Director of the Russian National Guard (Rosgvadia) Viktor Zolotov to authorize the transfer of Chechen “Akhmat” units from “other directions” to assume Wagner’s positions in the Bakhmut direction.
Kadyrov’s letter to Putin bypassed the Russian chain of command, and the withdrawal of Chechen forces from other parts of the theater likely posed a risk to Russian defensive lines, a risk that [Army General Valery] Gerasimov and Shoigu, or Putin, appear to have been unwilling to take.
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Kyiv's local council gives all-clear after air raid
Kyiv’s local council has sounded the all-clear after Russia carried out strikes on the Ukrainian capital in the early hours of Monday.
“Please keep an eye on reports and return to shelter if the siren sounds again,” the city’s administration wrote on Telegram.
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The strikes come as Russian forces begin evacuating people from the Russian-occupied area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, with more than 1,600 people, including 660 children, evacuated so far, Reuters reported, citing a Moscow-installed local official.
Ukraine is soon expected to start a much-anticipated counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory, including in the Zaporizhzhia region and on Saturday the head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog warned that the situation around the plant had become “potentially dangerous”.
In its morning update on Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces were evacuating local Russian passport-holders. “The first to be evacuated are those who accepted Russian citizenship in the first months of the occupation,” it said in a statement.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.
Five injured in Kyiv as Russia launches new wave of strikes
Five people have been injured in Kyiv as Russia launched a fresh assault across Ukraine in the early hours of Monday, with explosions reported in the capital as well as in the Black Sea city of Odesa and in the southern region of Kherson.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that three people were injured in the city’s Solomyanskyi district and two others injured when drone wreckage fell on to at two-storey building in the Sviatoshyn district.
“Likely as a result of debris falling on a parked car in the yard of a residential building, the car caught fire,” the city’s military administration added in a post on Telegram. “There is a recorded fall of debris on a residential building.”
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Helen Livingstone.
At least five people have been wounded by Russian strikes on Kyiv in the early hours of Monday, city officials have said, as Moscow launched another large-scale attack on Ukraine.
Three people were also 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.
Sviatoshyn, on the western edge of Kyiv, is a historical neighbourhood of the capital. Witnesses said they have heard numerous explosions in Kyiv, with local officials saying that air defence systems were repelling the attacks.
It comes amid fears for the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, as Russia evacuates 1,679 people, including 660 children, from areas nearby.
The head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog, Rafael Grossi, warned at the weekend that the situation around the plant has become “potentially dangerous” as Moscow-installed officials began evacuating people from nearby areas.
Ukraine is expected to start soon a much-anticipated counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory, including in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Other key developments:
An explosion was also heard overnight following a missile attack that hit the Black Sea city of Odesa, a local Ukrainian official said, and Ukrainian media reported sounds of explosions in the southern region of Kherson.
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.
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.
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 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, according to UK intelligence.
