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.
