From the evening of May 1st to the morning of May 2nd, Russian forces attacked 12 different locations in Ukraine with 163 drones, resulting in two deaths and seven wounded in the Dniprovskyi district of the southern Kherson region. Several Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv, Izmail, Kryvyi Rih, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia, were targeted during the attack.  

Ukraine launched a wave of drone strikes targeting Russia’s key oil export infrastructure from May 2nd into May 3rd. This included the key Primorsk oil port on the Baltic Sea, capable of handling hundreds of thousands of barrels per day, and the three Russian oil tankers, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alleged on Telegram to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to evade Western sanctions and price caps. Ukraine’s forces also hit a Karakurt-class corvette and patrol boat, and a 77-year-old man was killed in the Moscow region due to falling drone debris. According to C.N.N., personal security has increased for President Vladimir Putin in light of the recent success of the long-range Ukrainian drone strikes, which, as stated by Zelensky on May 1st, have cost Russia at least $7 billion dollars since the start of this year. 

Russia retaliated with 269 drones and ballistic missiles, killing two people and wounding nine total–three in the Odessa region and six in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Per Ukraine’s Air Force on Facebook, all but 20 drones were shot down or countered. 

On May 4th, Zelenskyy declared a unilateral, two-day ceasefire starting midnight on May 5th and ending May 6th. Russia did not formally acknowledge the ceasefire and continued military action on May 5th despite its earlier “Victory Day” ceasefire proposal from May 8th to 9th. Just hours before Ukraine’s proposed ceasefire began, Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least 22 people and injured more than 80 others. These attacks continued into the afternoon of May 5th. In early May, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that Russian forces have killed more than 70 and wounded more than 500 people in Ukraine. 

Ukraine is avoiding unnecessary casualties of the invasion by targeting key Russian oil infrastructure that help fund the war. Although Russia has suffered more casualties (approximately 1.2 million, according to the Center for Strategic International Studies), Jones and McCabe argue that the high number of Russian fatalities results from Russia’s failure to provide proper training and tactics, low morale, and ineffective operations. In regards to civilians, Russia has not tried to minimize civilian casualties. Many of the 570 people killed and wounded in Russia attacks were civilians carrying out ordinary civilian activities. 

Peter Dickonson, Chief Editor at the Business Ukraine Magazine, argued Russia’s strategy is to depopulate large parts of Ukraine. Researchers at the Institute for the Study of War note that Russia’s main goal is to “engineer a demographic reality in occupied Ukraine by making occupied territories appear intrinsically Russian” in order to facilitate future reintegration, and that Russia shows no signs of abandoning this strategy by targeting areas that are predominantly Ukrainian.