Russia has continued striking targets across Ukraine in defiance of a ceasefire announced by Kyiv, killing at least 26 civilians and wounding more than 118 in a wave of drone and guided bomb attacks. The assault, which included a strike on a kindergarten in the northern Sumy region that killed two adults — no children were present — prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to declare the truce dead and warn that Ukraine would "respond in kind."

The breakdown stems from a clash of rival unilateral ceasefire proposals with no shared terms or monitoring. Moscow announced a two-day truce for 8 and 9 May, timed to coincide with its Victory Day commemorations — the annual celebration of the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, marked with a major parade on Red Square in Moscow. Ukraine countered by declaring its own open-ended ceasefire from midnight on Tuesday, arguing this was the only way to test whether a genuine pause in fighting was possible. Within the first ten hours of Kyiv's proposed truce, Zelensky said, Russian forces violated it 1,820 times. "Russia has responded to our proposal for a ceasefire only with new strikes and new attacks," he said.

The heaviest toll was felt in Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeastern Ukraine, where guided bombs killed at least 12 people and injured 37, damaging residential buildings and industrial sites. At least five more died in Kramatorsk, a city in the eastern Donbas region, while further casualties were reported in Dnipro and Nikopol. Ukrainian officials warned the death toll could rise as rescue teams cleared debris. Separately, Ukraine demonstrated its own long-range strike capabilities on Tuesday, hitting a military-industrial facility in Cheboksary — a city roughly 1,500 kilometres inside Russian territory.

Zelensky noted that Russia had redeployed air defence systems to protect Moscow ahead of the parade, leaving other parts of the country more exposed — which he described as creating "additional opportunities for our long-range sanctions," widely understood as a reference to deep strikes inside Russia. In a sign of the Kremlin's own anxieties, this year's Moscow parade will be scaled back, with no military vehicles set to roll through the streets for the first time in nearly two decades. Russian-installed authorities in occupied Crimea have cancelled Victory Day events altogether, citing security concerns. Russia's foreign ministry also issued an unusual warning to foreign diplomats in Kyiv to consider evacuating ahead of a threatened "massive missile strike" on the Ukrainian capital if Ukraine disrupts the 9 May celebrations.

The episode underscores how deeply trust between the two sides has eroded. Ukraine's foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said Moscow's conduct showed that "fake calls for a ceasefire on May 9th have nothing to do with diplomacy." With Victory Day approaching and both sides trading threats alongside strikes, the prospect of even a brief pause in fighting appears remote.