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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.
Key events
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.
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.
Jennifer Rankin
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.
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.
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.
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 on 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Sixteen settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region were hit by a total of 75 strikes over the past day, according to the local military administration.
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A 72-year-old woman has been killed and two people were injured by shelling in the southern Dnipro region, local officials said.
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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.
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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.
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