Russia hit Ukraine with a nighttime barrage of 18 missiles, and Ukrainian air defense claimed it shot down nearly all of them.
Some injuries and at least one death — a child reportedly killed in the north-central region of Chernihiv — were reported.
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A post on the Telegram account of Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, said missiles were launched from Russian plants around 2.30 a.m. local time. It said 15 out of the 18 missiles launched had been destroyed.
Kyiv city officials said all missiles that had been directed at the capital were destroyed.
“According to [preliminary information], no casualties among the civilian population and no destruction of residential facilities or infrastructure have been recorded,” the city administration said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement that its forces had carried out missile strikes against Ukrainian locations, and claimed that all its missiles had all hit designated military sites.
The head of Russian-controlled Sevastopol said the Crimean city was the target of a drone attack. Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Moscow-installed administrator of the port city, said the Black Sea Fleet and Russian air-defense forces shot down one of the drones.
Explosions were also reported in the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Sumy regions. Chernihiv regional Governor Vyacheslav Chaus said that Russian shelling reportedly killed one child, who was near a school when the building was hit.
In the Dnipropetrovsk municipality of Pavlohrad, an industrial site was hit sometime just before midnight in a missile attack, along with several other locations in the region. Flames from the site lit up the night sky for hours.
Serhiy Lysak, the head of the regional administration, said 34 people, including five children, were injured in the attack on Pavlohrad, and seven rockets were shot down by air-defense units.
“An industrial enterprise was damaged in Pavlohrad,” he wrote on Telegram. “In a residential area, 19 high-rise buildings, 25 private houses, six educational institutions, and five shops were damaged; nearly 40 residential buildings.”
In recent days, there has been an uptick in aerial attacks and other explosions in Ukraine, as well as in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, including at a fuel depot on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
Some Ukrainian authorities have hinted that the new explosions might be connected to a widely anticipated counteroffensive.
The site of the fiercest fighting for nearly 10 months has been the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut, where Russia forces are slowly chipping away at Ukrainian positions, and are believed to hold most of the territory in the now-devastated town.
In an interview released on Telegram on May 1, the top commander for Ukraine’s ground forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said Ukrainian troops had clawed back some positions from Russian forces.
“The situation is quite difficult” in Bakhmut, Syrskiy wrote.
“At the same time, in certain parts of the city, the enemy was counterattacked by our units and left some positions,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke by phone with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on May 1 to discuss long-term defense cooperation. Zelenskiy noted on Twitter the confiscation of Russian assets and called for increased sanctions-pressure on Russia.
He said he and Trudeau “agreed on positions on the eve of the NATO summit and other international events” without giving details.
Canada last month announced a new package of military aid to Ukraine worth 39 million Canadian dollars ($28.8 million). The aid includes funds for 3.3 million liters of fuel, sniper rifles, ammunition, spare parts for guns, and new radio equipment for Leopard 2 tanks.
The ministry added that all eight Leopard 2 battle tanks pledged by Canada have been delivered to Poland, and that Canada has sent three instructors to train Ukrainian troops on operating the tanks.
