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.
Russia unleashes a barrage of missiles towards Ukraine ahead of the May 9 Victory Day holiday.
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 further stated that drone debris appeared to have struck a two-story building in Kyiv’s central Shevchenkivskyi area, causing damage. There was no immediate word about probable casualties.
Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa military administration, shared photographs on his Telegram channel of a massive facility completely consumed in flames, which he claimed was the result of a Russian strike on a food warehouse, among other things.
There have also been reports of explosions in Kherson’s southern district and Zaporizhzhia’s southeast region.
According to Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed local authority in Zaporizhzhia, Russian soldiers attacked a warehouse and a Ukrainian army position in Orikhiv, a small town in the region.
On February 24, 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine, declaring it a “special military operation” to defend Russia from neo-Nazis in Ukraine, while Kyiv and its allies argue it was an unprovoked territorial grab.
