Minutes before Zelenskyy\u2019s address, the Russian defence ministry urged residents and diplomats to leave Kyiv, threatening a potential retaliatory strike in case of a Ukrainian attack during the unilateral truce.<\/p>\n
The defence ministry said in a statement: \u201cWe remind the civilian population of Kyiv and staff at foreign diplomatic missions once again of the need to leave the city in good time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia has vowed that it would \u201ccompletely\u201d halt fire along the front line and stop long-range strikes on military infrastructure. If Ukraine did not follow suit, Moscow would respond \u201cin kind\u201d.<\/p>\n
Russia marks World War II Victory Day each year on May 9 with a massive military parade through Red Square.<\/p>\n
Putin has made memory of the war a central narrative of his 25-year rule and invoked it to justify his invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, Kyiv, which has expanded its drone capabilities, has stepped up strikes on Moscow and deep inside Russia, hitting targets hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The attacks have created unease in Russia ahead of the parade, normally a grand show of force displaying tanks and missiles, which marks the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n
Moscow has said it will omit military hardware from the procession for the first time in almost 20 years.<\/p>\n
The number of foreign guests has also shrunk \u2013 only the leaders of Belarus, Malaysia and Laos will attend, apart from leaders of two Russia-backed Georgian breakaway republics not recognised by the UN, according to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minutes before Zelenskyy\u2019s address, the Russian defence ministry urged residents and diplomats to leave Kyiv, threatening a potential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[13627,5515,6127,36667,2313,4863,2314,36670,5648,907,10316,912,34363,349,329,31720,7516,36668,3486,31722,427,17129,325,36669,13626,1022,2396],"class_list":{"0":"post-61875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-volodymyr-zelenskyy","8":"tag-against","9":"tag-allies","10":"tag-amid","11":"tag-attending","12":"tag-ceasefire","13":"tag-day","14":"tag-deal","15":"tag-doubled","16":"tag-down","17":"tag-kyiv","18":"tag-may","19":"tag-moscow","20":"tag-parade","21":"tag-president","22":"tag-russia","23":"tag-russias","24":"tag-strike","25":"tag-teetering","26":"tag-threat","27":"tag-ukrainian","28":"tag-victory","29":"tag-volodymyr","30":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","31":"tag-warned","32":"tag-warns","33":"tag-world","34":"tag-zelenskyy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116536938534126935","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}