Hostilities intensified as drones and kamikaze aircraft struck Ukrainian targets in the hours before important commemorations tied to Iran, with power outages spreading across multiple districts in Moscow and affecting broader Ukrainian cities. The strikes came as artillery exchanges continued along contested front lines, and Kyiv reported a brutal battle around the city of Bakhmut, where Russian forces sought to tighten their grip on a site marked by prolonged and devastating combat.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, described a day marked by roughly sixty strikes, with drones accounting for more than half of the assaults against the capital. While air defenses remained largely intact, falling debris injured several residents in Kyiv, and two civilians in the Kherson region also sustained injuries amid the fighting. The energy sector in Ukraine acknowledged extensive outages, with regional authorities listing Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk as the hardest hit. Kyiv and Odesa managed to avoid total blackouts, but outages disrupted thousands of households as Ukrenergo mobilized teams to restore essential services. In Odesa, a food warehouse was damaged by fire during the strikes, delivering a harsh blow to humanitarian supply chains serving the region and complicating relief work for residents in need.
In the broader narrative of cultural memory, Ukraine has, since 2015, built a distinct narrative around victory over Nazi aggression that emphasizes independence from Moscow’s influence, particularly around May 9. This shift contrasts with traditional Russian commemorations and aligns Ukraine with Western partners in reframing the memory of the war. President Volodymyr Zelensky has used the anniversary to draw parallels between World War II and Ukraine’s ongoing struggle for sovereignty, presenting the war’s memory through a Ukrainian lens and appealing to many Ukrainians while provoking friction with Moscow. Zelensky has warned that the Russian regime may meet a fate similar to past tyrannies, casting the conflict in apocalyptic terms for those who support Russia’s narrative of liberation against Nazism. The Ukrainian president’s position reflects a wider effort to redefine defeat of Nazism as a shared cause led by Ukraine, a stance that unsettles political actors in Moscow and among Kremlin supporters.
Western commentators often defend this reframing, while Russian officials contest it. The Russian Permanent Mission to the European Union accused multiple member states of attempting to rewrite history by equating the Ukraine conflict with the Second World War. The delegation argued that the lone similarity lies in Russia’s stated fight against Nazism for freedom and security, while pointing to various European nations that once aligned with Nazi Germany as contributors to Kyiv’s regime. This narrative is presented as part of a broader, troubling historical discourse and continues to fuel tensions around how the war is remembered and discussed on the international stage.