May's deadly start
Russia killed 70, injured 500 in the first week of May, as UN data shows. Two emergency workers died in double strikes
Issue #31
Olha, 68, says Russian air raids on frontline Zaporizhzhia, southern Ukraine, have become routine. “Nobody pays attention anymore,” she says – though she remembers May 5 clearly, when Russian bombs killed 12 people and wounded more than 40. It would turn out to be the deadliest day of the deadliest week Ukraine had seen since the beginning of May.
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded that in less than the first week of May, Russian forces killed around 70 civilians and wounded some 500 more. May 5 was the peak – in a single day, Russian strikes killed 12 in Zaporizhzhia, six in Kramatorsk, four in Poltava region, and four more in Dnipro in a missile attack. By various counts, at least 27 people died that day from Russian bombing alone.
As the UN report highlights, in several strikes, Russia hit the same sites twice – killing and wounding the rescuers who had rushed in after the first blow. In Poltava region, two emergency workers died when a second strike hit a gas extraction facility already attacked earlier that night. In Kherson, a drone targeted medical personnel as they arrived to treat victims of a previous drone strike.
Dnipro remains one of the hardest-hit cities in Ukraine. Russia strikes it relentlessly – kamikaze drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles – sometimes in waves lasting more than ten hours. Kramatorsk, too, rarely gets a break. The city in Donetsk region sits some 15 to 20 kilometers from the front line, living under a constant drumbeat of bombs and small FPV drones. “I convinced my father to leave,” says N., “because every time we talk on the phone, there are drones flying overhead.”
The three-day ceasefire, which ran from May 9 to 11, brought a brief lull in strikes on Ukrainian cities. But the quiet didn’t last. On the evening of May 11, President Volodymyr Zelensky said fighting on the front had continued throughout. “Ukraine is preparing for new Russian attacks,” he said.
Since the full-scale invasion began, more than 17,400 civilians have been killed by Russian strikes, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Over 43,000 have been wounded. Among them, more than 700 children have died, and nearly 2,400 others have been injured.
Independent journalism takes time and resources. Help me fund my next reporting trip – if 50 readers contribute €8/month, I can make it happen.