A Russian drone hit a high-rise residential building in Ukraine’s second-largest city, and at least three people were killed in three other Ukrainian regions, straining a three-day cease-fire timed for Victory Day celebrations.
Russia, meanwhile, outright accused Ukraine of violating the truce, citing what it said were attacks on six civilian locations inside Russia.
Ukrainian authorities blamed Russian drones or artillery for the deaths of civilians in the southern Kherson region, as well as the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhya regions.
In Ukrainian-controlled Kherson territory, which lies on the opposite river bank from Russian-controlled territory, seven people including a child were also wounded since early May 9, regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
In Dnipropetrovsk, a Russian drone hit an emergency vehicle, wounding the driver, officials said.
In Kharkiv, the attack on the high-rise building occurred late on May 9, hours after the conclusion of Russia’s annual Red Square parade.
The event, which was markedly pared down from previous years, went forward amid veiled threats from Ukraine about disrupting the event and angry open threats from Moscow to retaliate on Kyiv.
Ukraine’s president issued a mocking statement ahead of the event, saying he was authorizing the Kremlin parade to be held.
Oleh Synyehubov, Kharkiv’s regional governor, said eight people were wounded in the incident.
Ukrainian authorities said more than two dozen Russian drones were spotted over Ukraine overnight.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on May 10 alleged that Ukraine has targeted civilian locations in Kursk and Belgorod — two regions bordering Ukraine — and other sides.
Nearly 100 Ukrainian drones were spotted over the Kursk region. Aleksandr Khinshtein, the regional governor, said no injuries were reported.
In Belgorod, at least eight people were reported wounded from Ukrainian drone strikes, according to regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
The cease-fire is formally set to expire on May 11. Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov told reporters there were no ongoing discussions to extend the truce.
Nor, Ushakov said, were the any plans to resume peace talks, which the United States had been pushing forward.
Also speaking to reporters on May 9, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end, and he signaled he wanted to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe.
The US-brokered peace talks to end the all-out war, now in its fifth year, have faltered in part because of Russia’s hard-line demands, which include Ukrainian troops withdrawing from territories in the eastern Donbas region that they still control.
Ushakov told state TV that the Kremlin anticipated that the US negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — would travel again to Moscow for talks, though he did not indicate if the White House had yet agreed to such a trip.
