Russia launched large-scale missile strikes on Kyiv and across Ukraine early Monday morning, May 8, as Moscow prepares to commemorate the anniversary of its defeat of Nazi Germany with the ‘Victory Day’ holiday.
According to Ukrainian officials, at least five people were injured as a result of the strikes on Kyiv, while Russian missiles set fire to a food warehouse near the Black Sea city of Odesa.
Moscow is preparing for its Victory Day celebration on Tuesday, a major holiday for President Vladimir Putin, who has said that Russia will vanquish a Nazi-infested Ukraine, falsely comparing the Ukrainian government led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi administration.
Russia increased shelling of Bakhmut in the hope of taking it by Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s top general in command of the beleaguered city’s defense, after Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Saturday that it would abandon its intentions to withdraw from it.
Three persons were hurt in blasts in Kyiv’s Solomyanskyi area, and two more were injured when drone wreckage fell on the Sviatoshyn district, all west of the capital’s center, according to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko’s Telegram messaging channel.
The drone debris landed on a runway at Zhuliany airport, one of Kiev’s two passenger airports, creating no fire, but emergency services were on the scene, according to sources.
It also said that in Kyiv’s central Shevchenkivskyi district, drone debris seemed to have hit a two-storey building, causing damages. There was no immediate information about potential casualties.
Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, posted on his Telegram channel photos of a large structure fully engulfed in flames, in what he said was a Russian attack on a foodstuff warehouse, among others.
Reports also emerged of sounds of explosions in the southern region of Kherson and in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeast.
Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed local official in Zaporizhzhia, said that Russian forces hit a warehouse and Ukrainian troops’ position in Orikhiv, a small city in the region.
Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to defend Russia from neo-Nazis in Ukraine, but Kyiv and its allies say it was an unprovoked, land grab.