Kyiv has criticised Russia for attacking several Ukrainian cities overnight with more than 100 combat drones and three missiles in spite of a unilateral 24-hour ceasefire called by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine’s president had announced the truce after the Kremlin said it wanted a ceasefire on Saturday during its annual military parade in Red Square, but he said he would reciprocate if Vladimir Putin broke Ukraine’s ceasefire, which ends at midnight on Wednesday.
Instead of pausing operations, Moscow has intensified them, with a series of devastating bombings of busy urban areas. On Tuesday, 28 civilians were killed in bomb and missile strikes in the Donetsk, Poltava and Dnipro regions and dozens were injured.
On Wednesday, Russian drones hit a kindergarten in the north-eastern city of Sumy, killing a security guard and wounding two others, officials said. No children were there at the time.
Russian attacks on 14 regions of Ukraine since last Friday have killed at least 70 civilians and wounded more than 500, the UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine said on Wednesday.
“What is particularly alarming is both the scale of civilian casualties and the extent of territory affected in only a few days,” said Danielle Bell, the mission’s head.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said the latest strikes showed that Russia rejected peace. “This shows fake calls for a ceasefire on May 9th have nothing to do with diplomacy. Putin only cares about military parades, not human lives,” he wrote on social media.
Sybiha added: “Such attitude necessitates strong and increased pressure on the Russian regime, including new rounds of sanctions, isolation, accountability for Russian crimes, and enhanced support for Ukraine in all areas.”
Moscow’s drone and bomb attacks on Tuesday were the most deadly in Ukraine for weeks. They came at a time when Russia’s advances on the battlefield have practically stopped, with its armed forces losing more territory in April that they gained – for the first time since 2024.
The Kremlin has taken widespread measures to protect Saturday’s parade – which celebrates the allies’ victory over Nazi Germany in the second world war – after recent long-range Ukrainian drone strikes on a range of targets. For the first time in nearly 20 years, the event will take place without a display of tanks and ballistic missiles.
Air defence systems have been transferred to the Russian capital from other areas, and the mobile internet network has been shut down, apparently as a security precaution. It is unclear if Ukraine will seek to disrupt the event or instead target Russia’s oil infrastructure and military-industrial sites.
Zelenskyy said the concentration of air defences around Moscow would create “additional opportunities” for Ukraine to launch long-range attacks elsewhere in Russia. He said officials would decide on further actions later in the day in response to Russia’s most recent attacks.
Moscow’s defence ministry said it downed 53 Ukrainian drones between 9pm and 7am, far fewer than in previous days. It did not say whether any of the drones attacked after Kyiv’s unilateral truce was supposed to have come into effect at midnight.
Five people were killed by a Ukrainian drone strike on the city of Dzhankoi in occupied Crimea, according to the Russia-installed governor, Sergei Aksyonov. He reported the casualties just after midnight but had posted about the attack itself more than 90 minutes earlier.
Talks on ending Europe’s worst conflict since the second world war have shown little progress. Putin has refused to moderate demands first made during his 2022 full-scale invasion, including the handover of swathes of Ukrainian territory and the removal of its pro-western government.
