By Sergiy Chalyi<\/p>\n
KYIV\/ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, May 5 (Reuters) – 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 ceasefire \u200cproposed by Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Russia announced a ceasefire for May 8 to 9 to coincide with commemorations of the Soviet Union’s victory over \u200cNazi Germany in World War Two and a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square.<\/p>\n
Ukraine, in response, announced a proposal for an open-ended ceasefire starting at midnight on Wednesday (2100 GMT), urging \u200bRussia to reciprocate. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it was not an option for Russia to halt strikes for one day for its military parade while having heavily pounded Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, writing in English on X, said: “With mere hours until Ukraine’s ceasefire proposal comes into force, Russia shows no signs of preparing to end hostilities. On the contrary, Moscow intensifies terror.”<\/p>\n
Within minutes of the deadline passing, Sergei Aksyonov, the Russia-appointed head of Crimea, annexed by \u200cRussia from Ukraine in 2014, wrote on Telegram \u2060that a Ukrainian drone attack had killed five civilians in the city of Dzhankoi.<\/p>\n
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 \u2060the Ukrainian ceasefire went into effect.<\/p>\n
Russian officials had paid scant attention to the Ukrainian offer. Prime Minister Mikhail 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.<\/p>\n
In the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, an attack by \u200baerial \u200bbombs and drones killed at least 12 people, Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said \u200bon Telegram. He said 20 were injured.<\/p>\n
Fedorov said residential buildings, \u200ca car repair service and a car wash were damaged. The attack also sparked fires at a shop and an unidentified enterprise, he added.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
BOMBS AND DRONES<\/p>\n
“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.<\/p>\n
Further northeast, three aerial bombs dropped on the frontline city of \u200cKramatorsk killed six people, prosecutors in eastern Donetsk Region said on Telegram. The regional \u200bgovernor said 12 people were injured.<\/p>\n
In Dnipro, also in southeastern Ukraine, a Russian attack \u200bkilled four, Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n
“These are absolutely cynical, senseless terrorist strikes devoid \u200bof any military sense,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram. “Such Russian strikes on our cities and villages do not cease for \u200ca single day.”<\/p>\n
Regional Governor Oleksandr Hanzha put the death toll \u200bat three, with 16 injured, four \u200bin a serious condition.<\/p>\n
A Russian overnight strike on the gas production facilities in the Poltava region killed five people, including one person in neighbouring Kharkiv region.<\/p>\n
The governor of northern Sumy region said Russian strikes had injured six people. Two were in hospital.<\/p>\n
In central Russia, \u200ba Ukrainian drone attack on the Chuvashia region killed \u200ctwo, the Russian state news agency TASS reported.<\/p>\n
Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defence units had intercepted 93 Ukrainian drones over \u200ba seven-hour period ending at 1800 GMT over Crimea and other Russian regions.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Peter \u200bGraff and Ron Popeski; Editing by David Gregorio, Sanjeev Miglani and Lincoln Feast.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Sergiy Chalyi KYIV\/ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, May 5 (Reuters) – Russian attacks throughout eastern Ukraine killed at least 27…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8211,1116,8025,8212,8210,5,102,5422,4367],"class_list":{"0":"post-15314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-ceasefire-proposal","9":"tag-eastern-ukraine","10":"tag-ivan-fedorov","11":"tag-midnight-deadline","12":"tag-reuters-television","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-telegram","15":"tag-ukrainian-drone-attack","16":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}