A nine-story apartment block in Kharkiv’s Industrial district took a direct hit from a Russian drone on the night of May 9. The truce was not yet a day old.
Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of Kharkiv Oblast, said no one was killed or wounded. But residents did not walk away untouched: two 8-year-old boys suffered acute stress reactions. Emergency crews were still working at the site when the governor spoke.
A truce with a short life
President Donald Trump had announced the three-day ceasefire on May 8, covering May 9 to 11, after Russia and Ukraine each floated their own proposals. President Volodymyr Zelensky followed with a decree “allowing” Russia to hold its Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square without Ukrainian drones overhead.
An official from the Presidential Office told reporters the offer had limits. Kyiv would spare Red Square for the length of the parade, and would hold fire on the rest of the country only as long as Russia kept to the truce too.
The first night had been oddly calm over both countries. The Kharkiv strike suggests the quiet will not last the three days that were promised.
Fighting elsewhere did not stop
Ukraine’s General Staff counted 121 combat clashes along the front over the course of the day. Civilians paid for some of them.
In Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Governor Ivan Fedorov said a Russian first-person-view drone hit a car in the Polohivskyi district. A 67-year-old man died and two other people were hurt. Shelling in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast killed a 46-year-old woman and injured an 87-year-old woman, regional authorities said.
Not the first broken pause this week
This was the second ceasefire in a matter of days. Russia had announced a 48-hour Victory Day truce for May 8 and 9, and Ukraine answered by declaring its own, starting at midnight on May 6. Zelensky said that by 10 a.m. the next morning Russian forces had already broken Kyiv’s ceasefire 1,820 times.
