Russia has launched a fresh wave of drone, missile and airstrikes on cities across Ukraine, as Moscow stepped up attacks on the eve of its Victory Day parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Russia’s latest missile barrage came as both sides appeared to be preparing for a widely expected Ukrainian offensive Kyiv hopes will help recapture territory lost since the start of the war.
At the weekend, Russia began evacuating hundreds of civilians from occupied areas in south-eastern Ukraine, including families from Enerhodar, a city close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Moscow attacked Kyiv with three dozen drones overnight on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said, in what the city’s mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, described as the “biggest” drone attack so far.
Klitschko said all 36 drones had been destroyed over Kyiv but five people had been injured by debris from downed drones.
Russian missiles also caused a huge fire at a food warehouse in the Black Sea city of Odesa, killing one person. Ukraine’s Red Cross said its warehouse was hit in the strike.
In the east of Ukraine, Moscow intensified its attack on Bakhmut, hoping to take the embattled city in time to mark its Victory Day holiday, said a senior Ukrainian general charged with defending Bakmut, a city with a prewar population of about 70,000 that has been blasted to ruins.
Russia has been trying to conquer the city for months and the fighting has come at an enormous cost for both sides.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, on Sunday appeared to backtrack on his threat to pull his fighters from Bakhmut after announcing he had been promised as much ammunition and weaponry as needed” to continue the fighting.
A small part of Bakhmut remains in Ukrainian hands, with Prigozhin late on Sunday claiming his forces had made further small advances.
Russia has begun evacuating areas including the town that serves the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
“I decided to remove, first of all, children with their parents, the elderly, the disabled, patients of medical institutions from enemy fire and move them from the frontline territories deep into the region”, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-installed head of the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, said on Friday.
On Sunday, Balitsky said 1,552 people, including 632 children, had so far been relocated from two frontline cities and five districts. “People are also leaving dangerous areas on their own in their private vehicles”, he added.
Analysts widely believe that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is likely to be focused on liberating the southern parts of the country.
The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces confirmed the evacuation in a statement on Sunday.
“Russian occupants are evacuating civilians… to local recreation centres in the settlements of Berdiansk and Prymorsk”, the general staff said, referring to two south-eastern Ukrainian port cities on the coast of the Sea of Azov that have been occupied by Russia since the early days of Moscow’s invasion.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called for measures to ensure the safe operation of Europe’s largest nuclear plant as evacuations continued.
“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous”, Grossi said on the agency’s website.
Elsewhere, the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the Victory Day parade speech of the president, Vladimir Putin, would go ahead on Tuesday, despite security concerns after last week’s drone attack on the Kremlin.
More than 20 cities across the country have cancelled their victory parades, including those several thousands of miles from the frontlines amid fears of Ukrainian drone strikes.
Victory Day, when Russians celebrate the end of what they call the “great patriotic war” against Nazi Germany in 1945, has emerged as the centrepiece of Vladimir Putin’s vision of Russian identity over his 23 years in charge.
In his speech, Putin is expected to draw historical parallels between the two wars, falsely casting Ukraine as a successor to Nazi Germany.
The leaders of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Armenia – three post-Soviet countries that Moscow strives to keep in its orbit – announced on Monday morning that they would attend the military parade on the Red Square alongside Putin, in what appears to be a symbolic boost to the Kremlin.
In Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, said he had submitted a bill to parliament officially making 8 May a day of remembrance and victory, while 9 May would become Europe Day, the latest move that underlined Ukraine’s break with its Soviet past.
Standing in front of a second world war memorial, Zelenskiy also said Russian forces would be defeated in Ukraine, like Nazi Germany was at the time.
“All the old evil that modern Russia is bringing back will be defeated just as nazism was defeated”, he said.