Russian drone and missile strikes overnight and into Tuesday killed at least 22 people and wounded more than 80, Ukrainian officials said, coming hours before Kyiv planned to begin a ceasefire and days before Moscow announced its own temporary pause.
Powerful glide bombs struck Kramatorsk in the east, Zaporizhzhia in the south and Chernihiv in the north on Tuesday afternoon, officials said, killing at least 17 civilians and wounding 45. Attacks the previous night killed five and wounded 39.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the attacks as an act of ‘utter cynicism,’ saying Russia could stop fighting at any time and that such a pause would halt the violence and Ukraine’s responses. He said Ukraine would observe a ceasefire from the end of Tuesday and would mirror Russia’s actions thereafter, without giving an end date.
Moscow’s Defense Ministry later said it would suspend operations on Friday and Saturday but warned it would retaliate if Ukraine tried to disrupt Victory Day events on May 9. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the unilateral pauses and a U.N. spokesman reiterated calls for a full, immediate and lasting ceasefire.
Such short, holiday-timed suspensions have recurred since the conflict began in February 2022 and have produced little trust or tangible progress toward peace, analysts say.
While in Bahrain, Zelenskyy proposed a bilateral drone-defense partnership with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and offered to share Ukraine’s air-defense expertise with Gulf states. Ukrainian officials say they have been helping Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan with drone and air-defense advice, pointing to parallels between Iranian-backed strikes in the Gulf and Russia’s use of Shahed-style drones in Ukraine.
Ukraine reported that Russian forces fired 11 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and launched 164 strike drones overnight, including a jet-powered Shahed variant. Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted 149 drones and one missile, and two ballistic missiles failed to reach their targets, the air force said. Russian strikes damaged energy infrastructure, including gas facilities in the Poltava and Kharkiv regions; state energy firm Naftogaz said its assets have been attacked 107 times so far this year.
Zelenskyy described a follow-up strike on Poltava as ‘especially vile’ after a second missile was fired while rescuers were on the scene. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia’s main targets have been energy, oil and gas infrastructure, railways and industrial sites, though homes and businesses have also been hit.
Ukraine continued long-range operations against rear-area Russian targets. Kyiv said it launched F-5 Flamingo cruise missiles at military-industrial sites in Cheboksary, about 1,500 kilometers away; a regional health ministry reported three people wounded there. Ukrainian drones also struck the Kirishi oil refinery in the Leningrad region, sparking a blaze; regional authorities said 29 drones were shot down and reported no casualties. Moscow’s Defense Ministry said it destroyed 289 Ukrainian drones overnight across 18 Russian regions and intercepted drones over Crimea and the Azov Sea.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said midrange strikes into Russian-held territory doubled in April compared with March and quadrupled compared with February, targeting warehouses, command posts, air defenses and supply lines up to about 160 kilometers behind the front. He added that Ukrainian ground robots carried out 10,281 resupply and evacuation missions in April, an average of nearly 343 per day. Independent verification of some claims was not available.