Russia launched a guided bomb attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, on Sunday, resulting in one fatality and eight injuries, including an 8-month-old infant. The bomb struck near the city center, igniting a fire that damaged buildings and vehicles, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Kharkiv, located about 30 kilometers from the Russian border, has been a frequent target throughout the 28-month conflict. Russian forces have increasingly used guided bombs in their assaults.
Last month, Russian forces conducted a cross-border incursion into the Kharkiv region, capturing several villages. However, Ukrainian officials report that the situation near the border has since stabilized.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military released drone footage showing what appeared to be bodies in a civilian area in Toretsk, an eastern town heavily bombarded by Russia in recent days. Ukraine has intensified rescue operations in the Donetsk region due to these attacks. Local officials report that Russia is using powerful glide bombs, heavy Soviet-era munitions fitted with precision guidance systems, launched from aircraft flying out of range of air defenses.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated on Sunday that Russia had dropped over 800 glide bombs in Ukraine in the past week alone. “Ukraine needs the necessary means to destroy the carriers of these bombs, including Russian combat aircraft, wherever they are. This step is essential,” he wrote in an online post. Zelenskyy urged countries assisting Ukraine to relax restrictions on using Western weapons to strike military targets inside Russia. “Clear decisions are needed to help protect our people,” he said. “Long-range strikes and modern air defense are the foundation for stopping the daily Russian terror. I thank all our partners who understand this.”
In Toretsk, police rescuers helped older residents evacuate, carrying one woman out of her bed and onto a stretcher. Evacuee Oksana Zharko, 48, left her home with family members and her cat in a plastic carrier box. “It’s a terrible situation because for three days we could not evacuate,” she told The Associated Press. “Yesterday there was an attack, and our house was destroyed—very strong, there are no walls left. Everyone is stressed, emotional, in tears. It’s very scary.”
Russian attacks have also focused on the town of Chasiv Yar further north, where Ukrainian commanders say their resources remain stretched due to a months-long gap in military assistance from the United States. Ukraine is still struggling to stabilize parts of its front line after receiving much-needed military aid from the U.S. in April.
Hours after Zelenskyy spoke, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian glide bombs had struck near a postal warehouse in Kharkiv, killing an employee and injuring nine people, including an 8-month-old baby. The private postal and courier company Nova Poshta stated that the strike set at least seven delivery trucks ablaze, damaging at least three others and the warehouse itself. One driver died as a result. Rescue teams were combing the site on Sunday evening, according to regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov.
Less than a day earlier, Russian missiles hit a town in southern Ukraine, killing seven civilians, including children, and wounding dozens. Ukrainian officials published photos of bodies under picnic blankets in a park in Vilniansk, and deep craters next to the charred remains of a building. At least 38 people were wounded in the attack, and a day of mourning was declared on Sunday. Vilniansk is in the Zaporizhzhia region, north of the front lines, where Russian forces continue to occupy part of the province.
Russia-appointed officials in Donetsk, which is partially occupied and illegally annexed by Moscow, said that Ukrainian shelling on Sunday wounded a 4-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry reported that four of its staff came under shelling while attempting to put out a fire in the Kremlin-occupied local capital, also called Donetsk.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported that its forces shot down three dozen Ukrainian drones over six regions in Russia’s southwest overnight. It later stated that a total of 72 drones were downed on Saturday and during the night. Debris from one drone fell on a village in the Kursk region, blowing out windows and damaging roofs and fences, according to regional Governor Aleksey Smirnov.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday that he would allow Ukraine to use French weapons to strike inside Russia, a demand Ukraine has raised with new urgency since the Kharkiv incursion on May 10. “We think that we should allow them to neutralize the military sites from which the missiles are fired and, basically, the military sites from which Ukraine is attacked,” Macron said during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Macron clarified that civilian facilities could not be targeted.
His statement came a day after Russia fired missiles into a shopping center in Kharkiv, burning it to the ground, killing 16 people, and hospitalizing 45. Many are still missing. “This attack on Kharkiv is another manifestation of Russian madness. There is simply no other way to call it. Only madmen like Putin are capable of killing and terrorizing people in such a vile way,” Zelenskyy declared.
Ukraine’s air defenses often aren’t sufficient to intercept the hailstorms of missiles and drones fired from Russia and Crimea. Ukraine has said it needs to strike Russia’s missile launch sites and airfields. From those airfields, Russia flies out aircraft that drop roughly 3,000 glide bombs a month—massive munitions usually weighing 250kg or 500kg (550lb or 1100lb)—which military analysts say have given it the initiative on the front lines.
Currently, Ukraine can only down the bombers that deliver these glide bombs, and it did so twice this week, shooting down Sukhoi-25s over Kharkiv on May 22 and Donetsk the following day. It has also partially blinded Russian pilots by grounding their A-50 radar planes that facilitate reconnaissance and targeting. But that is not enough, says Ukraine, because Russian missiles, glide bombs, and drones keep coming, and now there are new ground invasions. It also needs to hit airfields, missile launch sites, and offensive battalions marshalling on Russian soil a few kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Standing in a bombed-out printing press in Kharkiv on Sunday, Zelenskyy said a new ground invasion was imminent: “Russia is preparing for offensive actions also 90km [56 miles] northwest from here—they gather another group of troops near our border,” he told reporters.
Currently, Ukraine is only able to strike Russia with its Soviet-era S-200/S-300 air defense missiles or domestically produced drones, which carry small charges and are easily shot down by Russian air defenses. Ukraine’s NATO allies have begun to recognize this, and on Monday the NATO Parliamentary Assembly voted to expand the use of weapons and speed up their delivery. The adopted Declaration 489 called on allies “to support Ukraine in its international right to defend itself by lifting some restrictions on the use of weapons provided by NATO Allies to strike legitimate targets in Russia.”
Most remarkably, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urged allies to consider lifting some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine. “The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told The Economist. “Especially now when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkiv, close to the border [with Russia], to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.”
Macron is not the first NATO leader to lift the restrictions. Britain’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, did so during a visit to Kyiv on May 3. France and the United Kingdom have since May 2023 provided Ukraine with the 250km-range (155-mile) Scalp/Storm Shadow missile, for a year its longest-range weapon, joined last month by the 300km-range (186-mile) ATACMS being provided by the US.
Despite the NATO declaration, the US Pentagon’s spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, said on Wednesday, “Our position hasn’t changed in terms of how we believe the Ukrainians can be successful on the battlefield. But I leave it to other countries to speak to their own weapons that they provide.” However, the position appeared to be the subject of debate. The New York Times reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in disagreement with other cabinet members over the prohibition against using US weapons in Russia. During a visit to Kyiv on May 15, Blinken had said, “We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war,” a statement that seemed to hint at a shift in policy.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told a news conference in Belarus on Friday that the White House was in no dilemma at all: “Washington is trying … to pretend the decision has not yet been made. It is a trick. We are certain that American and other Western-supplied weapons are being used to strike targets on Russian territory.”
Germany, the other major holdout, shifted towards Macron’s position on Monday, when Chancellor Scholz told reporters Ukraine could strike military sites within Russia. “Ukraine has every possibility to do this, under international law,” Scholz said. “It must be said clearly, if Ukraine is attacked, it can defend itself.” Scholz did not also shift on providing 500km-range (316-mile) Taurus missiles, which Germany produces, and Ukraine has asked for.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wasted no time warning that there would be “serious consequences” should Ukraine use European weapons inside Russia, and the traditionally frank Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on X that “Americans hitting our targets means starting a world war.”
France, meanwhile, was already holding talks on lifting another NATO taboo and sending its troops to train Ukrainian units inside Ukraine—something Stoltenberg did not endorse. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii announced on Telegram that French instructors would “visit” training facilities on Ukrainian soil soon. “I welcome France’s initiative to send instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian military personnel,” he wrote on Monday. “I have already signed the documents that will allow the first French instructors to visit our training centers soon.”
Poland, another leading Ukraine ally, has said it was considering felling another taboo—shooting down incoming Russian missiles from its own airspace. Ukraine asked its allies to do this after an international task force in the Red Sea helped shoot down 307 Iranian missiles and drones bound for Israel on April 13.
Ukraine also signed three new multiyear bilateral military agreements during the week, with Spain, Belgium, and Portugal. Spain and Belgium each promised 1 billion euros ($1.1bn) in aid this year, and Belgium said it would send 30 F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine by 2028. Ukraine has said it needs 120-130 F-16s to defend its airspace.
Not everyone in the alliance was on board with accelerating and expanding military aid to Ukraine. Hungary’s Viktor Orban told Kossuth Radio that he was not satisfied that NATO would not become a party to the conflict and that Brussels had “task forces working on ways for NATO to take part in this war.” “Hungary is opposed to this. The government is working intensively to figure out how to avoid participating in the war while remaining a NATO member,” Russian state news agency TASS quoted Orban as saying. “There aren’t many situations in NATO’s history where member states openly took a distinct stance like Hungary is now doing.” Hungary maintains strong economic and energy ties with Russia and has forbidden military aid to transit its territory en route to Ukraine.
Source: Reuters, The Associated Press, Al Jazeera
