Kyiv, Ukraine
Reuters
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions and the Black Sea port city of Odesa killed at least two civilians, set a food factory ablaze and damaged other infrastructure, homes and commercial buildings on Saturday, regional officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had used eight missiles of various kinds and nearly 70 guided aerial bombs against communities and frontline positions during the day, after Ukraine’s air force downed 13 Shahed drones that targeted the Kharkiv and Dnipro regions overnight.
A firefighter works at a site of a Russian drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 4th May, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Vitalii Hnidyi
Zelenskiy said Moscow had no desire for peace. “Russia can only be forced to leave Ukraine alone,” he said in his nightly video address. A world peace summit taking place in Switzerland in June – without Russia – “must succeed”, he said.
He said Ukraine’s 110th mechanised brigade brought down a Russian Su-25 fighter-bomber over the eastern Donetsk region, one of four areas of Ukraine Moscow says it has annexed.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday Moscow had taken control of 547 square kilometres of the territories this year.
Oleh Syniehubov, Governor of Kharkiv region, said Russian shelling killed a 49-year-old man on the street near his home in the village of Slobozhanske. An 82-year-old woman was killed and two men were injured in overnight shelling in Kharkiv city, he wrote on the Telegram app.
A Russian missile attack set fire to a business premises in an industrial district of Kharkiv city, injuring six employees, he added. Local prosecutors identified it as a food factory.
In the south, Odesa regional Governor Oleh Kiper said three people had been injured in the city by a missile strike.
Reuters could not immediately verify the reports of casualties and damage.
An air force commander said air defences brought down all 13 of the attack drones overnight, but Syniehubov said falling debris injured four people and sparked a fire in an office building.
In the industrial Dnipropetrovsk region, shelling injured a 57-year-old woman and damaged infrastructure in Nikopol, near the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and two were wounded in another overnight attack, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
Meanwhile, Russia has opened a criminal case against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and put him on a wanted list, the state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, an announcement Ukraine dismissed as evidence of Moscow’s “desperation”.
TASS reported that the Russian Interior Ministry database showed Zelenskiy was on a wanted list but gave no further details.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends a joint press conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on 29th April, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Thomas Peter/File photo
Ukraine’s foreign ministry noted Russian President Vladimir Putin was himself subject to arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant.
“We would like to remind you that unlike the worthless Russian announcements, an International Criminal Court warrant for the arrest of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on suspicion of war crimes is quite real, and subject to implementation in 123 countries,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It said the Russian announcement was “evidence of the desperation of the Russian state machine and propaganda, which can think of no other way to attract attention”.
Russia has issued arrest warrants for a number of Ukrainian and other European politicians since the start of the conflict with Ukraine in February 2022.
Russian police in February put Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuania’s culture minister and members of the previous Latvian parliament on a wanted list for destroying Soviet-era monuments.
Russia also issued an arrest warrant for the International Criminal Court prosecutor who last year prepared Putin’s war crimes warrant.
– Additional reporting by RON POPESKI and OLENA HARMASH
