May 9, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Ukrainian air defenses destroyed about 15 cruise missiles launched by Russia in the airspace over Kyiv in the early hours of Tuesday, a Ukrainian military official said.

In a Telegram post, Serhiy Popko, head of the city's military administration, said preliminary information indicated there were no casualties and little damage caused.

Popko said the attack was "carried out by four Tu-95MS strategic bombers from the Caspian Sea region,” in the fifth air assault launched by Russia against Kyiv since the beginning of May.

Some context: The intercepted attacks Tuesday come after Kyiv's mayor said Russian strikes early Monday marked Moscow's "most massive" drone attack on the capital since the invasion began last year. The Ukrainian military has warned that Russia is trying to wear down Ukraine's air defenses ahead of an anticipated counteroffensive.

It's Victory Day in Russia, where an annual Moscow parade is set to take place in an exhibition of patriotism marking the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II.

The day is the most significant in Russian President Vladimir Putin's calendar, and he has long used it to rally public support and demonstrate the country's military prowess.

But in light of two recent alleged Kremlin drone attacks, deepening fissures between senior Russian officials over war tactics, and an expected Ukrainian spring offensive, tensions in Moscow are at an all-time-high ahead of the second parade since Russia launched its invasion.

Here are the latest developments:

The United States is set to announce a $1.2 billion aid package to Ukraine as early as Tuesday, according to a US official familiar with the package. It comes at a critical point with Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces looming. 

The package will include drones, artillery ammunition and air defense missiles as well as other capabilities, the official said.

The package — first reported by the Associated Press — will fall under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which means it will be contracted and purchased from manufacturers instead of pulled directly from Defense Department stocks in a drawdown.

Instead of supplying Ukraine with the weapons it currently needs, USAI packages are intended to create a medium and long-term supply for Ukraine.

Last week, the Pentagon announced its 37th drawdown package for Ukraine since August 2021. The $300 million package included additional ammunition for the HIMARS rocket system, artillery and tank ammunition, anti-tank weapons and more. 

Russia's wave of strikes on Ukraine early Monday was its "most massive" drone attack since the invasion began last year, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Other attacks were recorded in Ukraine's Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

The Ukrainian military said it repelled the assault on the capital, the latest in Moscow’s efforts to wear down its air defense system. According to Kyiv's mayor, “36 drones flew to the capital” but were shot down by air defense forces.

“However, debris from several drones damaged some social facilities and a residential high-rise building in Sviatoshyn district,” Klitschko said.

The mayor said the drone attack did not cause any deaths, “but five people were injured in two districts of the city.” 

“Three of them were in high-rise buildings. Two victims were hospitalized, one of them underwent surgery. Doctors say that there is no threat to their lives,” he added.

Shahed drones are manufactured in Iran and have been frequently deployed by Russian forces in Ukraine. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the private Russian military group Wagner, said on Monday that preliminary information indicates that his fighters in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut have started to receive more ammunition.  

Prigozhin has repeatedly complained that his Wagner units are not receiving enough ammunition from Russia’s defense establishment. Last week, he announced they would withdraw from Bakhmut — a threat he now appears to be rowing back on. 

Earlier Monday, a Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut said his unit faces “constant” shelling and had seen no evidence of the Russian ammunition shortage that Prigozhin had claimed.

A significant part of the Russian-installed administration of Skadovsk left the occupied city on Sunday, Ukrainian military officials said. 

The activities of Skadovsk’s district and city administrations were “suspended,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its daily update.

On Saturday night, “the occupiers loaded documentation, office equipment, and other property of state institutions into vehicles,” before leaving with their families on Sunday morning, Ukrainian military officials said.

The General Staff claims the Russians planned to transport the “documents and looted property," by sea, further into Russian-held territory. 

Skadovsk sits on the Black Sea. 

The statement said similar activity was occurring in the nearby villages of Krasne, Shevchenko, Shyroke, Ulianivka and Petrivka, as well as in Mykhailivka — some 28 kilometers (17 miles) away. 

Kremlin-backed authorities in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol are in the process of mobilizing residents who have Russian passports, the exiled city council claimed on Telegram. 

The Telegram post included a photo of a document which the authors said is a referral, received by a resident. 

"Draft boards have started working in Mariupol. The occupiers are already looking for citizens who do not fulfill their 'military obligations'. The enemy plans to conscript men until August," said Vadym Boichenko, the exiled Ukrainian mayor of Mariupol.

Denis Pushilin, head of the Russian-backed self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, which administers Mariupol, signed a decree allowing the mobilization of Russian citizens in the occupied region on March 31. 

In this vacant and damaged village, news of Russia’s evacuation of occupied towns along the southern front cannot come soon enough.

Ukrainian-held Mala Tokmachka, just over a mile (2 kilometers) from Russian-held territory in the Zaporizhzhia region, has been left ghostly and battered by shelling, leaving the central square pockmarked, and the school’s facade torn off. Shrapnel is mixed in with fallen pine cones.

Raisa, a local woman passing some Ukrainian soldiers on her bicycle, said the explosions had picked up recently and she had heard small arms fire from the nearby highway. “There is no way out for us,” she said, of the remaining 200 civilians. “We have no water, gas or power for more than a year.”

Just 9 miles (15 kilometers) down the road is Polohy, a town that Russian occupiers said Friday they would evacuate, a process which local sources said had got underway at the weekend, although some Russian soldiers apparently remain in place.

The town is a focus for Ukraine's spring counteroffensive. While Kyiv has said it will not announce its commencement so as to cause maximum surprise, recent statements from Russian officials in occupied areas about attacks have indicated at least its opening stages are likely underway.

Polohy is one of over a dozen frontline settlements that occupying forces announced Friday would be emptied of civilians. A Russian occupation official, Yuri Balitsky, said “we cannot risk the safety of people and will provide funds for organized travel, lump sum payments, accommodation and meals.” He added children would undergo rehabilitation and rest in children’s camps,” echoing the language of previous incidents that Ukraine has dubbed forced deportation and on which the International Criminal Court based a war crimes indictment against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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