Ukraine is making a surplus of up to 50% in some types of weapons and military cooperation “is already under way” with countries in the Middle East, the Gulf, Europe and the Caucasus, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday. Deals involve the production and supply of drones and missiles as well as software and technology, said Zelenskyy, adding that Kyiv has handed a proposal to the US for cooperation on drones, defence systems and other types of weapons for use in the air, on land and at sea.
Another oil facility deep inside Russia – at Perm, 1,500km (900 miles) from Ukraine – was on fire Wednesday after what Ukraine’s president said was his country’s latest long-range drone attack. Nasa’s satellite fire monitoring system showed a hotspot over an array of tanks and a large surrounding area near Perm. Ukraine’s SBU security service said it struck the Transneft pumping station as part of efforts to target Russia’s revenue-earning energy infrastructure. Plumes of black smoke towered over the southern Russian oil town of Tuapse on Wednesday and residents wore face masks after multiple Ukrainian drone strikes on a major oil refinery in the coastal town.
Eight people were injured in an attack on the Kharkiv region, the regional prosecutor’s office said. In the Sumy region, officials said a 60-year-old woman died as a result of an attack. In the southern Odesa region, Russian forces struck Izmail, damaging a hospital and infrastructure. A Ukrainian strike killed three passengers of a minibus and wounded eight people in the Russian border region of Belgorod, the local governor said on Wednesday. Ukraine denies targeting civilians.
Russia’s annual Victory Day parade will be held on 9 May without military hardware for the first time in almost two decades, Pjotr Sauer writes, ostensibly because of fears of a long-range attack by Ukrainian drones. Since the invasion, the parades have been scaled back, with observers suggesting Russia’s battlefield losses meant it did not have enough tanks and armaments to mount a decent show. Last year’s grand parade, for the 80th anniversary of Victory Day, did feature tanks, rocket launchers and drones.