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 a midnight deadline ushering in an open-ended cease-fire proposed by Kyiv.
Russia announced a cease-fire for May 8 to 9 to coincide with commemorations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two and a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square.
Ukraine, in response, announced a proposal for an open-ended cease-fire starting at midnight local time on Wednesday, urging Russia to reciprocate.
President Volodymyr Zelensky 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 cease-fire proposal comes into force, Russia shows no signs of preparing to end hostilities. On the contrary, Moscow intensifies terror.”
Within minutes of the deadline passing, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-appointed head of Crimea, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, wrote on Telegram that a Ukrainian drone attack had killed five civilians in the city of Dzhankoi.
It appeared likely that the attack had taken place before the deadline expired and there was no evidence of any strikes taking place immediately after the Ukrainian cease-fire went into effect.
Russian officials had paid scant attention to the Ukrainian offer.
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin offered greetings after midnight praising World War Two veterans and expressing admiration for servicemen in Ukraine as being “worthy of their ancestors and reliably defending” the country.
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.
“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.
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, Zelensky said.
“These are absolutely cynical, senseless terrorist strikes devoid of any military sense,” Zelensky 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.
A Russian overnight strike on the gas production facilities in the Poltava region killed five people, including one person in neighboring Kharkiv region.
The governor of northern Sumy region said Russian strikes had injured six people. Two were in the hospital.
In central Russia, a Ukrainian drone attack on the Chuvashia region killed two, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said air defense units had intercepted 93 Ukrainian drones over a seven-hour period ending at 1800 GMT over Crimea and other Russian regions.
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