May 27, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news

Shelling killed at least one person and wounded several others in Russia's Belgorod region Saturday, according to state news agency TASS. 

The shelling targeted the region's Shebekinsky district and hit “two large enterprises,” Belgorod Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said, according to TASS. There is a fire at one facility, he added. 

Belgorod made headlines this week when a group of anti-Putin Russian nationals, who are aligned with the Ukrainian army, claimed responsibility for an attack there.

The region borders northeastern Ukraine.

Russia has shot down 12 Ukrainian drones over various settlements over the course of 24 hours, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The ministry's news service claims Russia's defenses shot down drones in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic, and in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia.

Russian air defense systems also intercepted two long-range "Storm Shadow" cruise missiles and 19 rockets from HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, it says.

Three explosions have been reported in Mariupol, a southern Ukrainian city occupied by Russia, a Ukrainian official said Saturday.

One of the explosions was caused by Russian air defense systems in Nikolske, a settlement just northwest of the city, Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the city's Ukrainian mayor, wrote on Telegram.

Smoke can also be seen rising from the side of a railway station in the area, according to Andriushchenko.

Pro-Russian officials have in recent days accused Ukraine of striking Mariupol, a city it once fiercely defended. Andriushchenko has commented on the blasts online, but the Ukrainian military has not officially claimed responsibility for the attacks.

CNN cannot independently verify battlefield developments.

Hundreds of German diplomats and state employees living and working in Russia have been expelled by Moscow and given just days to leave the country, a spokesperson from Germany's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Saturday's order is the latest in a series of tit-for-tat expulsions that began after Germany decided to kick out several Russian diplomats who had been accused of working for Russia's intelligence service. Russia responded by expelling 20 German diplomats in April.

The foreign ministry spokesperson said the latest order applies to German diplomats, state employees working in Russia and teachers at the government-sponsored Goethe Institute, which offers German language courses and cultural exchange programs. All must leave the country by June 1.

The statement called the latest move "unjustified" and "incomprehensible."

"This limit, set by Russia as of the beginning of June, requires a major cut in all areas of our presence in Russia," the statement read. "The Federal Government is now concerned to ensure a minimum presence of intermediaries in Russia while maintaining a diplomatic presence as well."

Ukrainian mortar shelling killed a construction worker in the Russian border district of Sudzhansky, the regional governor claimed on Telegram Saturday.

The worker had been stationed near the village of Plekhovo, where crews were fortifying the defensive line along the state border, according to Roman Starovoyt, the Kursk region governor.

Plekhovo is less than two miles from the Ukrainian border, in western Russia.

Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, has added to speculation that a long-expected massive counteroffensive by Kyiv against Russia’s occupying forces could be imminent. 

“The time has come to take back what is ours,” Zaluzhnyi wrote Saturday morning.

Zaluzhnyi's post comes after about a month of potential hints that a counteroffensive operation could be in the works, including an uptick in certain types of attacks and the deployment of military hardware.

Officially, however, the operation has not begun. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have final say on when the operation is set to begin. But he may not even do that publicly, to keep Moscow off-balance.

It is possible we only learn the counteroffensive has begun when its first tangible results are revealed. A lot of what is happening is not playing out in public, even if the plan is set in stone.

CNN's William Bonnett and Svitlana Vlasova contributed to this post.

Explosions were reported close to the Russian-occupied city of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine on Saturday, marking the second time in 48 hours the port city was hit.

Ukrainian official Viktor Dudukalov, the exiled deputy chairman of the Berdiansk District Council, told Ukrainian national television that facilities housing Russian soldiers in the village of Novopetrivka were hit. The targets were about 15 kilometers (9 miles) to the northeast of the city center.

Dudukalov suggested the hits could have been from “Storm Shadow” cruise missiles, which Britain said it had given to Ukraine several weeks ago. With the acquisition of those missiles, Kyiv's forces were given the ability to strike targets further into Russian-occupied territory.

Ukraine’s armed forces typically do not officially comment on types of weaponry used in particular strikes.

Some background: Russia captured Berdiansk in the first week of its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and then subsequently used it to land its warships. The port city had previously been hit by a missile strike in the early hours of Thursday, according to an official working for the Russian authorities who occupy the city.

It is approaching 1 p.m. in Ukraine, where first responders have finished working to clear debris after a devastating Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro yesterday.

In a short but surely carefully crafted post on the messaging app Telegram, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces has ratcheted up speculation that a massive counteroffensive against Russia’s occupying forces could be imminent. 

The text appears underneath a video just over a minute in length showing Ukrainian forces apparently training at sunrise.

The video shows an array of Western-provided equipment, including German-made Leopard 2 tanks, seen as one of the key battlefield acquisitions by Ukraine in recent months, as well as US-made MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) armored vehicles, M777 artillery pieces and HIMARS rocket launchers.

The video ends with soldiers and their commander chanting a defiant message: “Ukraine, my native motherland, Lord, our heavenly father, bless our decisive offensive, our sacred revenge, our holy victory.”

Officially the counteroffensive is yet to begin. As we have previously reported, the different signals from Ukraine may be an attempt to keep Moscow off-balance.