Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday called for pressure on Russia to come to the negotiating table, after an overnight drone strike on the city of Odesa killed two and wounded 15. “We need further pressure on Russia to force it to be quiet and to negotiate. The more effective the sanctions are, the more incentives Russia will have to end the war,” Zelensky said on Telegram. Apart from Odesa, Russia launched a barrage of 170 drones targeting the cities of Kyiv, Sumy, Kropyvnytsky and the regions of Kharkiv and Cherkasy, Zelensky said, adding that Moscow was “ignoring” Washington’s call for an unconditional ceasefire. Russia rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the United States and Ukraine in March, demanding a halt in Western military aid for Kyiv.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a surprise three-day truce from May 8-10, coinciding with Moscow’s large-scale World War II Victory Day celebrations. The Ukrainian emergency service described the attack on Odesa as “massive” and said high-rise buildings, private houses, a supermarket, school and cars were damaged. More than 200 people were evacuated from one of the buildings, it added.
A Ukrainian drone strike on a market in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine on Thursday killed seven people, a Moscow-installed official said.
“Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a massive strike with FPV drones against civilians... At least seven people have been killed and more than 20 injured,” Vladimir Saldo, governor of the Russian-occupied part of Kherson region wrote on Telegram, using the Russian spelling for the town’s name. A photo released by the governor showed what appeared to be a body lying between two one-storey buildings, one of which was damaged. Saldo had also posted a video showing smoke rising from the market from another strike, claiming it was used to “finish off the survivors”. Oleshky lies on the occupied bank of the Dnipro River and fell to Russian forces at the start of their 2022 offensive.
Explosions were also heard in the city of Sumy and air raid warnings were triggered in several places including Sumy, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernigiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia. The reported strikes came after the United States and Ukraine on Wednesday signed a minerals deal that US President Donald Trump’s administration has called a new form of US commitment to Kyiv after the end of military aid.
After initial hesitation, Ukraine accepted the minerals accord as a way to secure long-term investment from Washington, as Trump aims to drastically scale back US security commitments around the world. Ukraine had said any deal would need to include long-term and robust security guarantees that would deter Russia from attacking again. A copy of the text published by Ukrainian media does not place any specific security commitments on Washington. Ukraine said it secured key interests after protracted negotiations, including full sovereignty over its own rare earths, which are vital for new technologies and largely untapped. Trump had initially demanded rights to Ukraine’s mineral wealth as compensation for US weapons sent under former president Joe Biden after Russia invaded just over three years ago.
Announcing the deal in Washington, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it showed “both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine.” “This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” Bessent said. “And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.” The Treasury statement notably mentioned Russia’s full-scale war of Ukraine — diverging from the Trump administration’s usual formulation of a “conflict” for which Kyiv bears a large degree of responsibility. In Kyiv, Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said the agreement was “good, equal and beneficial.” — AFP
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