Russian drones and missiles rain down on Ukraine’s third wartime Orthodox Easter celebrations

Russia launched drones and missiles on Ukraine as people packed churches to celebrate the Orthodox Easter at the weekend.

Two people were killed and more than a dozen injured, including a child, in attacks on the east of the country.

On Saturday evening, Ukraine’s Air Force reported that it had destroyed 23 of 24 Russian drones fired at Kharkiv, Kherson and the Dnepropetrovsk region.

Earlier in the day, President Volodymr Zelensky said Ukraine had shot down another Russian fighter jet.

Analysts warn that Russia is ramping up its offensive across Ukraine ahead of US arms reaching Ukrainian frontline forces.

Orthodox Christians in both Ukraine and Russia were celebrating Easter when the strikes hit towns and cities.

“In Pokrovsk, rocket attacks killed two people and damaged a house,” according to Vadim Filashkin, Ukraine’s governor of Donetsk.

Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkiv, said: “A missile hit the central part of the city, in the residential area. Currently there are at least five people injured.”

Russian officials have started to describe Kharkiv, which has a population of nearly two million people, as a serious target. It’s the first time they have done so since September 2022 when a Ukrainian counter-attack forced the Russian army to retreat.

Last month, a Russian missile destroyed Kharkiv’s TV tower as part of a series of intensifying attacks.

Russia has been making gains over the past few weeks, pushing back Ukraine’s outnumbered and outgunned forces. Russia’s Ministry of Defence said yesterday its forces had captured the village of Ocheretino a few kilometres west of Avdiivka, a city that Russia seized earlier this year.

Western analysts said the capture of Ocheretino was part of Russia’s consolidation of control along one section of the frontline and its strategic significance was limited. More important is the battle for Chasiv Yar, a town built on high ground that defends a handful of other cities in the valleys below. There, sources said Ukrainian forces continued to defend against waves of near-suicidal Russian attacks.

The British Ministry of Defence has said that Russia’s army has now suffered 465,000 casualties, dead or injured, in more than two years of war. This is roughly the population of the city of Liverpool.

However, it said Russia could absorb the high casualty rate amid the Kremlin’s plans to reorientate society and the economy to feed its war machine.

“Despite the extreme cost in life, Russia has fully adapted its military to attritional warfare which relies on mass over quality,” it said in its daily security briefing.

Ukrainian generals have briefed that the situation along the front line is dire but Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, says Ukraine will be able to hold off Russian attacks with a resupply of weapons and even prepare for a new counteroffensive next year.

In April, after a delay of several months, US lawmakers approved $60bn (€56bn) in military aid to Ukraine.

Residents in Kostiantynivka, 15km southwest of Chasiv Yar, said they remained determined to celebrate the holiday despite the worsening security situation from Russia’s 26-month-old invasion.

“We came in 2022 and in 2023, and we’ll come again,” said Natalia Hryhorieva (58) outside an Orthodox church as she waited for a priest to bless her Easter basket with holy water.

Cannon fire bellowed in the background during the early-morning mass, in which the priest decried the “godless” enemy and led a prayer for Ukraine’s victory.

Earlier, President Zelensky called on Ukrainians to unite in prayer for each other and soldiers on the front line, saying God has a “Ukrainian flag on his shoulder”.

Kostiantynivka is one of several key Ukrainian-held cities in the industrialised Donetsk region that could become Moscow’s next major target if Chasiv Yar falls, analysts have said.

Russian forces are also advancing from the south, having captured the village of Ocheretyne, Russia’s defence ministry said. “We want this to end quickly, so our kids can feel calm,” said Nina Shyshymarieva (31), standing with her young daughter.

“So they can have a childhood.”

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