Explosions rang out across the front line in Ukraine on Sunday as both sides sought to gain an advantage before an expected Ukrainian campaign to retake territory captured by Russia, with the death of a 2-year-old girl underscoring the 15-month war’s enduring toll on civilians.
Russian forces fired another barrage of cruise missiles and attack drones at targets across Ukraine overnight, according to Ukrainian officials, while blasts were reported in Russian-occupied Melitopol and Berdiansk — two cities in southern Ukraine that military analysts say could be targets of the widely anticipated counteroffensive.
The Russia-installed authorities in occupied Crimea said they had intercepted nine Ukrainian drones overnight, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. The report could not be independently confirmed, but it was the latest in a string of reported attacks in occupied areas that military analysts say are most likely a Ukrainian effort to weaken Russia’s defenses.
After months of preparations, Ukrainian officials have said in recent days that Kyiv’s forces are ready to launch the counteroffensive, and President Volodymyr Zelensky took the unusual step in an overnight speech of thanking a dozen individual soldiers by name for their service to their country.
A departure from his usual practice of highlighting specific military units, the speech was an attempt to show “more personal words of gratitude to particular warriors,” Mr. Zelensky said. Moscow’s invasion last year has forged a close bond between Ukrainian civilians and their military.
Russia has been stepping up its missile strikes in recent weeks as Ukrainian forces prepare for the counteroffensive, firing deadly waves of aerial assaults on cities and towns across the country. As Ukraine paused on Sunday to honor the youngest victims of the war in ceremonies held nationwide, the toll continued to climb.
The body of a 2-year-old girl was pulled from the rubble of a house after a Russian strike in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the head of the regional military administration, Serhiy Lysak, said on Sunday morning. He said that 22 other people — including five children — were also wounded in the strike, which hit the village of Pidhorodne on Saturday evening.
Few aspects of the war have been as painful for Ukrainians as the deaths of children. At least 535 have died and at least 1,000 have been wounded, according to official figures, mainly in missile and rocket attacks. On Sunday, a small crowd in Kyiv hung tiny bells on trees in a solemn ceremony to remember children killed. Similar observances were held elsewhere in the country.
Mr. Zelensky paid tribute to the hundreds of child victims of the war in a statement.
“Many of them could have become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history,” he said, noting that instead they had fallen victim to Russian missiles, which “keep ravaging and claiming lives of young Ukrainians.”
The Ukrainian Air Force said on Sunday that four of six cruise missiles fired by Russian forces overnight had been shot down. It added that air defenses had also intercepted three of five attack drones.
Two cruise missiles hit a military airfield near the city of Kropyvnytskyi, in central Ukraine, a Ukrainian Air Force spokesman, Yurii Ihnat, said in an appearance on national television on Sunday. He said he would not disclose what damage had been inflicted.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement that its forces had conducted successful strikes against Ukrainian military airfields, hitting radar stations, aviation equipment and ammunition depots. It did not say where the attacks had taken place or whether the targets included Kropyvnytskyi, and the claims could not be independently verified.
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, has been a frequent target in the recent wave of aerial assaults. For weeks, Russian attacks have sent residents running for shelters in the middle of the night, with explosions rocking the city as air defenses worked to intercept the missiles. At least three people have been killed by debris falling from the sky in the last week.
On Sunday, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said that some of the cruise missiles fired overnight had been aimed at Kyiv but that all were shot down before they reached their targets. City residents heard nothing, he wrote on the messaging app Telegram.
Recent attacks in Russian-occupied areas suggest that southern Ukraine could be a focus of the counteroffensive and both sides have built up their forces along the front lines there in apparent anticipation.
Residents reported five blasts in the northern suburbs of Melitopol late on Saturday, according to the southern city’s exiled Ukrainian mayor, Ivan Fedorov, who posted a grainy photograph on Telegram of smoke rising behind buildings. The images could not be independently verified and there was no independent confirmation of an attack.
The exiled Ukrainian authorities of Berdiansk, a port city in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, reported eight explosions on Saturday and urged residents to stay away from the sites. The Russia-installed authorities in the city attributed the blasts to air defenses intercepting a Ukrainian missile attack. As with other reports, it was not possible to confirm what happened independently.
Berdiansk and Melitopol are two strategically important cities that Russia has turned into military strongholds. If Ukrainian forces were to recapture either one, that would sever the strip of land that connects Russian-held territory in the east and south of Ukraine.
That coastal strip of land is around 60 miles deep and runs from Crimea to territory Russia illegally annexed in eastern Ukraine. While Ukraine has this year stepped up its attacks on Russian targets in the area, it has not yet made a sustained effort to breach Russian defenses along the front line in the south.
Some military experts as well as Ukrainian officials argue that it is a distraction to talk about the precise moment when the counteroffensive might begin. They say it would be more instructive to talk about a gradual process by which Ukraine would regain the initiative in the 15-month war.
Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute in Virginia, argued that, when it comes to timing, it was clear that the counteroffensive did not come in the spring, as some had expected, and that it will effectively take place in the summer.
Mick Ryan, a military analyst and retired Australian general, wrote on Twitter on Sunday that there was “no perfect time” for Ukraine to begin a counteroffensive.
“But there will be a time that is optimum for Ukrainian force preparations and where they are most able to exploit Russian weaknesses,” he said. “That time is close.”
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense produced its own semi-serious response to talk about the timing of its assault, releasing a video on Sunday that showed soldiers in camouflage theatrically placing their fingers to their lips against a backdrop of distant gunfire and explosions.
“Plans love silence,” the caption read.
Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting.
