???? Live: Zelensky says Kyiv not warned of US secret docs leak

Issued on: 03/05/2023 – 07:08Modified: 03/05/2023 – 07:11

6am: Russia launches unsuccessful strikes on Kyiv 

Russia launched a third nightly round of attacks on Kyiv in six days, city authorities said early on Wednesday, but air defence systems destroyed all its drones, with no immediate reports of casualties or destruction.

Air raid sirens blared for several hours in Kyiv, the surrounding region and most of eastern Ukraine, with the skies clearing only at dawn.

“All enemy targets were identified and shot down in the airspace around the capital,” Kyiv’s military administration said on the Telegram messaging app, citing initial details.

3:49am: Fuel storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar on fire, governor says

A fuel storage facility in Russia’s Krasnodar region was on fire in the early hours on Wednesday, the region’s governor said, adding that according to preliminary information there are no casualties.

“The fire has been classified as the highest rank of difficulty,” Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar region which lies in Russia’s southwest across the Sea of Azov from Ukraine, said on the Telegram messaging app.

2:33am: Zelensky says Kyiv not warned of US secret docs leak

Washington did not warn Kyiv about the top-secret documents leaked to internet chat rooms – containing sensitive information about Ukraine’s war effort – before the news broke in the media last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Washington Post.

The embarrassing security breach revealed US unease about a coming counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces against Russian troops as well as concerns about Ukrainian air defenses.

“I did not receive information from the White House or the Pentagon beforehand,” Zelensky told the newspaper in an interview in Kyiv Monday.

“We did not have that information. I personally did not. It’s definitely a bad story,” he said, calling the situation “unprofitable”.

• Key developments from Tuesday, May 2

Ukrainian forces shelled a village in the Russian Bryansk region bordering Ukraine early on Tuesday, the local governor said in a social media post, a day after an explosion derailed a freight train in the region.

Meanwhile the EU announced it will put forward a plan to boost its production capacity of artillery shells to one million a year, as it scrambles to arm Ukraine and replenish its own stocks after decades of under-investment in defence.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)