A Ukrainian military commander on May 2 vowed not to give up the eastern city of Bakhmut as Russian forces shelled the southern Kherson region for the second night in a row and as an explosion caused another freight train to derail in Russia.
With indications that the start of a long-promised counteroffensive is near, General Oleksandr Syrskiy, commander of Ukraine's ground forces, underlined the importance Kyiv attaches to holding Bakhmut.
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"Together with the commanders, we have made a number of necessary decisions aimed at ensuring the effective defense and inflicting maximum losses on the enemy," Syrskiy said in remarks released after visiting troops in Bakhmut.
"We will continue, despite all the forecasts and advice, to hold Bakhmut, destroying Wagner and the other most combat-capable units of the Russian Army," he said.
Ukraine still holds some parts of the city after months of fierce fighting against regular Russian troops and mercenaries belonging to the Wagner group.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said control of some parts of Bakhmut had changed hands recently.
"There are positions lost, and positions we are driving the enemy out of. Fierce fighting continues -- as of now, the city is controlled by our armed forces," she told a Ukrainian television channel.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the paramilitary group, said Wagner units advanced up to 160 meters in some directions on May 2, repeating claims on Telegram that Ukrainian forces now control less than 3 square kilometers of Bakhmut.
It was not possible to verify the battlefield claims of either side.
Prigozhin also repeated his complaints that Moscow was not supplying his forces with enough ammunition.
According to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Russian forces have received sufficient ammunition and Russia’s domestic defense industry generally meets the military’s needs. Shoigu made the comments in a conference call with military commanders on May 2, TASS reported.
Russia also launched a rocket attack on the eastern city of Kramatorsk overnight, wounding at least one person and causing damage to a school, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, reported on May 2, without providing further details.
Separately, a spokesman for the Russia's southern battle group said Russian forces struck a railway station on Kramatorsk with rockets fired from a Tornado multiple-rocket launcher and claimed a railcar full of ammunition was destroyed. The Russian account could not be independently verified.
In April last year, 61 people were killed in a Russian strike on the Kramatorsk main railway station, an attack that Human Rights Watch has called "a clear war crime."
Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians since the start of its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, despite air attacks often hitting hospitals, residential buildings, schools, and other civilian infrastructure.
In Donetsk, Ukrainian defenders repelled 41 attacks over the past 24 hours, most of them concentrated in the Bakhmut-Avdiyivka-Maryinka direction, the General Staff of the Ukrainian military said in its daily report on May 2, adding that Russia carried out a number of air strikes in the area.
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Meanwhile, the Kremlin on May 2 rejected a U.S. assessment of Russian military casualties in Ukraine, saying it had been "plucked from thin air."
The White House on May 1 said it estimates that since December Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties, including more than 20,000 killed in fighting for control of Bakhmut and other parts of eastern Ukraine.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said nearly half those killed since December were Wagner group mercenaries, many of them convicts who were released from prison to join Russia's fight.
The regional military administration in Kherson said late on May 2 that Russian forces struck the town of Kozatske on the Dnieper River, killing a 66-year-old man.
"Only today (May 2) the Russian Army took the lives of four residents of the Kherson region; seven more people were injured," said the government of the Kherson region.
The deaths of three people were reported earlier by the Kherson Regional Prosecutor's Office. They were killed earlier on May 2 by artillery fire and air strikes in Kherson city and the Bilozerka suburb several kilometers to the east.
Ukraine retook parts of Kherson in November as the Russian troops withdrew eastward across the Dnieper River. Russia kept on shelling the region from across the river regularly and recently stepped up such attacks.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Ukrainian television that Moscow has reverted to deliberately targeting residential areas with missile strikes.
"There's no doubt that they are conducting direct attacks on civilian residential houses or locations with many houses belonging to the civilian population," Podolyak said.
This could be a tactic to try and provoke a rushed counteroffensive, Podolyak said. The latest missile strikes are also intended to test whether Ukraine is able to protect its own air space, he said.
The railway explosion and derailment occurred in the evening on May 2 in the Bryansk region of Russia, according to regional Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz.
"An unidentified explosive device went off near the Snezhetskaya railway station. There were no casualties," Bogomaz said on Telegram. He did not say who was responsible.
Russian Railways (RZD) said that "illegal interference by outsiders" caused the train to derail around 7:45 p.m. A locomotive and about 20 wagons of a freight train derailed, the rail company said on Telegram.
TASS reported that local prosecutors had begun an investigation, citing law enforcement agencies.
A similar explosion in Russia on May 1 caused a freight train to jump the tracks west of Bryansk.