Ukraine And Russia Declare Separate Truces

Russia marks World War II Victory Day each year with a massive military parade through Red Square.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that having a ceasefire so Moscow could mark the celebration was "not serious", and that Russia was afraid Ukrainian drones would "buzz over Red Square".

"As of today, there has been no official appeal to Ukraine regarding the modality of a cessation of hostilities that is being claimed on Russian social media," Zelensky said in a post on X.

"In this regard, we are announcing a ceasefire regime starting at 00:00 (2100 GMT) on the night of May 5-6. In the time left until that moment, it is realistic to ensure that silence takes effect," he added.

The Ukrainian leader later landed in the Gulf nation of Bahrain for talks on "security cooperation", a source in the Ukrainian delegation told AFP.

Deadly attacks

Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least nine people on Monday, according to Ukrainian officials.

A Russian ballistic missile attack on the town of Merefa — outside Ukraine's second city of Kharkiv — killed seven civilians and wounded dozens earlier Monday, regional authorities said.

AFP journalists in Merefa saw several bodies strewn in the street, covered by blankets and white sheets — with shops, houses and cars damaged.

A separate Russian strike on the village of Vilnyansk in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed two others, the region's governor Ivan Fedorov said.

"Unfortunately, a married couple was killed: a 51-year-old man and a 62-year-old woman," Fedorov said. 

Their 31-year-old son was wounded in the strike, along with three other people, he added.

In Russia, a Ukrainian drone killed a civilian in the border region of Belgorod, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

A Ukrainian drone also hit a residential high-rise building in an upscale Moscow neighbourhood overnight, the Russian capital's mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

Russia advances slow

Russia lost more territory than it gained in Ukraine in April for the first time since a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) showed.

Moscow ceded control of about 120 square kilometres (46 square miles) between March and April, the ISW data showed.

Despite the fighting at the front reaching a near stalemate, intense and deadly drone-dominated attacks have continued unabated in recent months.

Russia's advances have slowed since late 2025, as communication issues in the Russian army combined with Ukrainian counterattacks helped Kiev make localised breakthroughs in the southeast.

The Ukrainian army's net gains — their first in more than two years — were marginal however, representing only 0.02 percent of Ukrainian territory, the data showed.

Moscow currently occupies just over 19 percent of Ukraine, the majority of which it seized during the first weeks of its invasion in 2022.

Approximately seven percent, including Crimea and areas in the Donbas region, were already under Russian or pro-Russian separatist control before the invasion.