Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

[Saif]

Ukraine fires drones at Russia after Moscow threat

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces had destroyed almost 350 Ukrainian drones overnight, days before Moscow holds World War II commemorations and amid competing calls from both sides for a temporary ceasefire.

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Ukraine fires drones at Russia after Moscow threat
Agence France-Presse . Moscow, Russia 08 May, 2026, 01:27

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its forces had destroyed almost 350 Ukrainian drones overnight, days before Moscow holds World War II commemorations and amid competing calls from both sides for a temporary ceasefire.

Ukraine had announced a unilateral truce on May 6 — a request ignored by Moscow’s army which continued its attacks throughout the day and overnight. Kyiv’s proposal was a counter-offer after Russian president Vladimir Putin called for a truce to cover May 9, when Russia marks victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and stages a major military parade on Red Square.

Some 347 Ukrainian drones were destroyed between 1800 GMT and 0400 GMT, Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.

A woman was killed in the Belgorod border region, the local governor said, and 13 were wounded in the Bryansk region, which also borders Ukraine.

Russia fired 102 drones at Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said in a statement.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had slammed Russia for ignoring the call to halt fire and left open the possibility of launching massive strikes on Russia during the Saturday celebrations.

Kyiv has intensified its strikes on Russian energy sites in recent weeks, while a Russian barrage has killed dozens in recent days, in one of the most deadly periods for civilians in weeks.

Moscow on Wednesday evening threatened a huge strike on the centre of Kyiv in the event Ukraine attacks during the Victory Day events.

It said it had sent a note to foreign embassies in Ukraine urging them to evacuate their staff.​

 

[Saif]

Russia confirms 3-day truce, POW swap with Ukraine

The US president, Donald Trump, announced a three-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia starting Saturday, saying he hoped it could lead to a long term deal to end the war...

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Russia confirms 3-day truce, POW swap with Ukraine
Agence France-Presse 09 May, 2026, 02:25

Russia on Friday confirmed a truce over for 9-11 and a large prisoner-of-war swap with Ukraine, the Kremlin said, after the United States announced both earlier.

‘I confirm the acceptability for the Russian side of the initiative just proposed by US president Donald Trump, concerning a ceasefire for a prisoner-of-war exchange between Russia and Ukraine,’ Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told journalists.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday ordered the army not to attack Moscow’s Red Square during the WWII victory day parade on May 9, following the US announcement of a three-day ceasefire between the nations.

‘For the duration of the parade from 10:00am, (07:00 am GMT) Kyiv time on May 9, 2026, the area of Red Square shall be excluded from the plan for the use of Ukrainian weapons,’ said a decree on the presidential website.

The US president, Donald Trump, announced a three-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia starting Saturday, saying he hoped it could lead to a long term deal to end the war.

Russia had previously announced a two-day unilateral ceasefire to mark its May 9 World War II Victory Day on Saturday. Ukraine previously stated that it too had offered a truce but that this had been ignored by Moscow.

The truce would also include a mutual swap of 1,000 prisoners each, said Trump, who struggled to end the four-year conflict he once pledged to solve within a day of taking office in the past year.

‘I am pleased to announce that there will be a THREE DAY CEASEFIRE (May 9th, 10th, and 11th) in the war between Russia and Ukraine,’ Trump said on his Truth Social network.

‘This request was made directly by me, and I very much appreciate its agreement by president Vladimir Putin and president Volodymyr Zelensky,’ said the US president.

‘Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought War.’

Russia and Ukraine traded attacks on Friday before Trump’s announcement.

Ukraine had previously never said it would abide by Moscow’s call to briefly halt strikes, lambasting Putin for only wanting to pause fighting so he could stage Saturday’s annual military parade on Red Square.

Kyiv said Moscow had ignored a Ukrainian proposal to halt fighting earlier this week — a counter-offer for a short-term ceasefire. Zelensky had cast it as a test of whether the Kremlin was serious about providing a brief respite in the four-year war.

Russia has threatened a massive strike on the heart of Kyiv if Ukraine disrupts the Victory Day parade, repeatedly urging foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital ahead of time.

On the streets of Kyiv before Trump’s announcement, some brushed off the Russian threats.

‘Nothing new will happen,’ Vasyl Kobzar, a 40-year-old bank employee, told AFP. ‘I'm worried, but it's become routine, unfortunately.’

Ukrainian officials told AFP there had been no orders for additional security measures to be taken so far. ‘We’re just giving (the Russians) the finger,’ said one lawmaker, speaking anonymously.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia had fired 67 drones overnight — the lowest number in almost a month.

‘Despite the declared ceasefire, the enemy has not reduced the intensity of assault operations,’ Zelensky said, adding that Ukraine was responding in kind.

Russia said it had downed more than 400 Ukrainian drones — 100 of them targeting Moscow — since midnight, and that its troops were ‘responding symmetrically’.

A Ukrainian drone killed a 41-year-old man and his 15-year-old daughter in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said the Moscow-backed administration.

Zelensky hailed a Ukrainian strike on an oil depot in the Yaroslavl region, around 200 kilometres northeast of Moscow.

Some 13 airports in southern Russia were closed Friday after a Ukrainian drone hit an air navigation centre in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, Moscow’s transport ministry said. It later said that flights had been partially restored.

Putin convened a security council meeting over the strike, calling it an ‘act of a terrorist nature’ that could endanger civil aviation.

Ukraine had dismissed Russia’s temporary truce as a propaganda measure to protect the victory parade on May 9 — one of the most important patriotic events for Putin.

Hours before Russia’s ceasefire began, Zelensky warned Moscow’s allies against attending the parade.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both sides and tens of thousands of civilians, most of them in Ukraine, have been killed during the war that began in February 2022.

Putin has made the memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany a central narrative of his 25-year rule, staging massive parades in central Moscow on May 9 and invoking it to justify his invasion of Ukraine.

But military hardware will be absent from the parade for the first time in almost two decades and only a handful of foreign guests will attend.

Talks on ending what has spiralled into Europe's worst conflict since World War II have shown little progress and have been sidelined by the Iran conflict.​