Russia launched a new series of overnight drone strikes on Ukrainian cities, including the capital, Kyiv, and the Kherson region, where Ukrainian officials said 18 civilians were killed when drones struck a supermarket and a train station in Kherson city and hit other targets in the southern region.
“As of now, we know about 18 dead and 46 wounded,” said Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine’s presidential office, on Telegram. “Russian attacks on Kherson continue,” he added.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office had said earlier that 12 people were killed in Kherson, the regional capital, which in recent weeks has been regularly shelled from Russian forces positioned across the Dnieper River.
Its statement on May 3 said the deaths and destruction had been caused by the “chaotic shelling and shelling of civil infrastructure in the regional center.”
The strikes also took the lives of three employees of an energy company who came under Russian shelling in the afternoon as they worked near two villages. The statement noted that the employees had worked to repair power grids after regular attacks by the Russian Army in order to provide people with light.
Another fatality occurred in the morning in the village of Darivsk, where a man died in the shelling, the Prosecutor-General’s Office said. There were no details available on the other six deaths.
The Ukrainian Air Force Command said it destroyed 21 of the 26 Iranian-made Shahed-136/131 drones launched in the attack. The drones had been launched from Russia’s Bryansk region and from the eastern coast of the Sea of Azov, it said.
The capital’s military administration said all the drones targeting Kyiv were shot down, without specifying their number. The attack was the third wave of Russian air strikes on Kyiv in six days.
The drones, however, were able to hit civilian targets in Kherson. The Ministry of Internal Affairs said earlier on May 3 that three civilians were killed at the supermarket at around 11 a.m. local time, and the Health Ministry said on Facebook the one person was killed and six others were wounded in the attack on the train station.
Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin announced a 58-hour curfew to begin in Kherson city at 8 p.m. on May 5.
Civilians Killed During Russian Strikes In Kherson Region
Russian forces killed eight civilians in attacks on the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson on May 3, striking a hypermarket and railway station in the regional capital and hitting villages nearby, officials said.
In Dnipro, a drone hit the city administration building, the head of the regional military administration, Serhiy Lysak, said on Telegram.
“A fire broke out, but it has already been extinguished. No residents were wounded. Rescuers are still working at the site,” Lysak wrote.
Explosions were also reported on social media in the Cherkasy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhzhya regions.
There also was a report of a fire at a fuel depot in the Russian village of Volna near the bridge to Crimea, and the Kremlin claimed that it foiled a drone attack aimed at striking President Vladimir Putin’s residence at the Kremlin. Ukraine denied any involvement in the alleged attack.
In the Donetsk region, Russian forces spearheaded by Wagner mercenaries continued to launch waves of assaults over the past 24 hours on Bakhmut, which remains the focal point of Moscow’s efforts in the east.
“Russian troops focused on conducting offensive operations in the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiyivka, and Maryinka directions carried out more than 30 attacks, Ukraine’s General Staff said in its daily report on May 3. The Russian attacks were repelled, it said.
On May 2, a Ukrainian military commander vowed not to give up Bakhmut.
Ukraine still holds some parts of the city after months of fierce fighting against regular Russian troops and Wagner mercenaries.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the paramilitary group, said he believed Ukraine’s promised counteroffensive has begun and there has been heightened activity along the front line.
In a statement published by his press service on Telegram, Prigozhin said that the “active phase” of the counteroffensive would begin in the coming days.
