Russian attacks throughout eastern Ukraine killed at least 27 people on Tuesday, including 12 in one of the worst strikes so far this year, hours before the deadline for a proposal from Kyiv for an open-ended ceasefire to begin at midnight.
Russia announced a ceasefire for May 8th to 9th to coincide with commemorations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the second World War and a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square.
Ukraine, in response, announced a proposal for an open-ended ceasefire starting at 9pm Irish time on Wednesday, urging Russia to reciprocate. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it was not an option for Russia to halt strikes for one day for its military parade while having heavily pounded Ukraine.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, writing in English on X, said: “With mere hours until Ukraine’s ceasefire proposal comes into force, Russia shows no signs of preparing to end hostilities. On the contrary, Moscow intensifies terror.”
In the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, an attack by aerial bombs and drones killed at least 12 people, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram. He said 20 were injured.
Fedorov said residential buildings, a car repair service and a car wash were damaged. The attack also sparked fires at a shop and an unidentified enterprise, he added.
Reuters Television footage showed flames engulfing cars and a garage and huge clouds of black smoke billowing skyward. Medics attended to the injured, many of them covered in blood, on an adjacent street.
“A cynical strike on facilities in the city of Zaporizhzhia: four guided aerial bombs. After the hit, the enemy intentionally began attacking those locations with [Iranian-designed] Shahed drones,” Zaporizhzhia city council secretary Rehina Kharchenko told Reuters.
“For a very long time, State Emergency Service workers and municipal services were unable to approach the location.”
Further northeast, three aerial bombs dropped on the frontline city of Kramatorsk killed six people, prosecutors in eastern Donetsk Region said on Telegram. The regional governor said 12 people were injured.
In Dnipro, also in southeastern Ukraine, a Russian attack killed four, Zelenskiy said.
“These are absolutely cynical, senseless terrorist strikes void of any military sense,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram. “Such Russian strikes on our cities and villages do not cease for a single day.”
Regional governor Oleksandr Hanzha put the death toll at three, with 16 injured, four in a serious condition. Hanzha said a business in the city had been set ablaze.
A Russian overnight strike on the gas production facilities in the Poltava region killed five people, including one person in neighbouring Kharkiv region.
The governor of northern Sumy region said Russian strikes in the region had injured six people. Two were in hospital.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack on the central Chuvashia region killed two on Tuesday, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Officials in Russian-held Crimea said air defence units had repelled an attack by Ukrainian drones. Russia’s defence ministry said air defence units had intercepted 93 Ukrainian drones over a seven-hour period ending at 6pm Irish time over Crimea and several regions in southern and central Russia.
Elsewhere, a Ukrainian drone attack killed five civilians in the Crimean city of Dzhankoi, Russian news agencies quoted the Russia-installed head of the local government as saying early on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, as a result of a strike by enemy drones in Dzhankoi, there are victims among the civilian population. Five people were killed,” the agencies quoted Sergei Aksyonov as saying. – Reuters
