As Kyiv's forces say they are finalizing preparations for a counter-offensive announced several months ago to recapture the territories occupied by Russian troops, the last few days have been marked by several attacks in the border regions with Russia. Acts of sabotage have also been reported in Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. On Monday, May 1, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told state television that the army was "reaching the finish line" of its preparations and that commanders will decide "how, where and when" the counteroffensive will be conducted.
On the same day in Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby unveiled the latest US intelligence estimates on Russian losses: 100,000 dead since December 2022, including 20,000 in the ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine, especially around the city of Bakhmut. Kirby said that half of them belong to the Wagner Group, a private Russian paramilitary company. "The bottom line is that Russia's attempted offensive has backfired," said Kirby, while declining to comment on Ukrainian losses.
On Monday, an "explosive device" derailed a freight train in the Russian region of Bryansk, bordering Ukraine, without causing any casualties, according to the region's governor, Alexander Bogomaz. The explosion occurred "50 meters" from the train, according to the Belarusian railroad company, which said in a statement that it was one of its own, departing from the city of Gomel, Belarus, heading to Bryansk. Also on Monday, a high-voltage line was damaged by another explosive device in the northwestern region of Leningrad, near the border with Estonia and Finland, local governor Aleksandr Drozdenko announced. An investigation for "sabotage" has been opened.
Fire in Sevastopol
Also according to Bogomaz, on Saturday evening, four people were killed and two wounded in the village of Suzemka, 9 kilometers from the border, during a Ukrainian artillery attack. On the same day, five villages in the Russian region of Belgorod were left without electricity as a result of Ukrainian artillery fire, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported. The towns and infrastructure in this border region are regularly hit by strikes attributed by Moscow to the Ukrainian army, although Kyiv does not claim responsibility.
The day before, a drone attack caused a fire in an oil depot in Sevastopol, the home port of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Crimea. The impressive images of a huge mushroom of black smoke made the rounds on Ukrainian social media. According to remarks by Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev, quoted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, four oil tanks were damaged and "burned." According to the Ukrainian authorities, the attack destroyed more than 10 tanks containing some 40,000 tonnes of oil products.
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