Russia mercilessly pounded Ukraine with drone and missile strikes early Monday, killing at least four civilians, on the eve of its Victory Day holiday marking the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany during World War II, which Kyiv celebrated a day earlier in a break with Moscow.

Kyiv’s mayor said Russia had unleashed 60 Iranian-made drones, including 36 at the capital, all of which had been shot down.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post that debris from the destroyed drones hit a two-story apartment building and a parked car, which caught fire.

At least five people in the capital were injured by pieces of wrecked drones during the nighttime assault, which set off air raid alarms in the dead of night, according to Serhii Popko, head of the Kyiv City Military Administration.

Russian shelling of 127 targets across northern, southern and eastern parts of Ukraine killed three civilians, the Ukrainian defense ministry said.

Explosions sounded in the southern region of Kherson and southeastern Zaporizhzhia.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-installed official in Zaporizhzhia, said Russian forces hit a warehouse and Ukrainian troops’ position in the small city of Orikhiv.

Russian long-range bombers launched up to eight cruise missiles at Ukraine’s southern Odesa region, one of which hit a food warehouse, sparking a massive inferno. One person was killed and three wounded in that attack.

Some of the Soviet-era cruise missiles fired against Odesa self-destructed or fell into the Black Sea before reaching their targets, according to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuri Ihnat.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian forces were making a final desperate push to capture the eastern city of Bakhmut just in time for the Victory Day celebrations – and before Kyiv’s anticipated counteroffensive.  

The head of the Wagner mercenary group claimed late Sunday that his fighters were inching closer towards gaining control of the ravaged city after nine months of bloody attritional battles that have been likened to a “meat grinder” by both sides.  

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s comments came after he backpedaled on his threat to pull his forces out of Bakhmut as early as Wednesday, citing lack of ammunition.

In Russia, Moscow was preparing for Tuesday’s hyper-patriotic Victory Day parade, the most important day in the calendar for Russia under Vladimir Putin.

Some of Russia’s large-scale military parades that typically accompany Victory Day have been scrapped or pared down. Western observers say this decision arose in part out of security concerns and because Moscow has lost so much military equipment during its disastrous winter offensive in Ukraine that there are not enough spare tanks and armored personnel carriers to show off to the public.

In a new break with Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky marked Victory Day Monday rather than Tuesday, announcing that he had signed a decree to change the date of the holiday in line with the practice of Western allies.

“Recalling the heroism of millions of Ukrainians in that war against Nazism, we see the same heroism in the actions of our soldiers today,” said Zelensky in a video address.

“Unfortunately, evil has returned. Just as evil rushed into our towns and villages then, so it does now. As it killed our people then, so it does now,” he said. “And all the old evil that modern Russia is bringing back will be defeated, just as Nazism was defeated.”

Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed Zelensky for changing the date, accusing him of betraying the memory of Ukrainians who fought the Nazis.

“What is worse than an enemy? A traitor. That is Zelensky, the embodiment of Judas in the 21st century,” she said.

On the day of Russia’s parade, Zelensky will mark “Europe Day” alongside European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who will travel to Kyiv Tuesday to commemorate a 1950 French declaration that led to the founding of the body that became the EU.

With Post wires