At least eight people have been wounded and scores of buildings have been damaged in a Russian air attack overnight on the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine said, adding that air defence systems destroyed 20 drones and four cruise missiles.
With a Ukrainian counteroffensive looming, Russia has intensified its missile and drone strikes this month after a lull of nearly two months. Waves of attacks now come several times a week, the heaviest of the war.
"The Russian invaders attacked military and infrastructure facilities of the eastern outpost of Ukraine - the city of Dnipro," Ukraine's air force said on the Telegram messaging service.
"The attack was carried out by 16 different types of missiles and 20 Shahed-136/131 strike drones," the air force said, adding that air defences brought down 20 Russian drones and four cruise missiles.
At least one man was wounded in the attack on Dnipro city and seven people were injured on an attack on Synelnykivskyi district of the Dnipropetrovsk region, the governor, Serhiy Lysak, said on Telegram.
Scores of buildings, including private homes, apartment blocks and administrative infrastructure were damaged or destroyed, he said.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the reports.
'The fighting continues'
Ukraine on Monday said it continued to fight for Bakhmut and still controlled a corner of the eastern city, as Russia's Wagner said it would transfer control of the ruined hotspot to the Russian army by 1 June.
Ukraine has denied that Bakhmut has fallen to Russian forces, saying it is hanging on to one area of the city and that battles are ongoing.
Both Wagner and the regular Russian army said over the weekend that Bakhmut has fallen to them.
"The fighting continues," Ukraine's deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar said, a day after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Bakhmut was "not occupied" by Russia.
Malyar said Kyiv's troops retained control of the "Airplane" district of Bakhmut.
"The battle for the dominant heights on the flanks - north and south of the suburbs - continues," she added.
The head of Russia's mercenary group Wagner, whose fighters have spearheaded Moscow's storming of Bakhmut, announced on Saturday that the city had fully fallen to his fighters.
On Monday, he said the mercenaries would leave Bakhmut by 1 June and hand over control to regular Russian troops.
"Wagner will leave Artemovsk from 25 May to 1 June," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an audio recording on Telegram.
Bakhmut was previously known as Artemovsk, in honour of a Soviet revolutionary, before Ukraine renamed it.
Prigozhin said the mercenaries had set up "defence lines" on the western outskirts of the city before a planned transfer of control to the Russian army.
"If the ministry of defence does not have enough personnel, we have thousands of generals," said Prigozhin, who has been embroiled in an increasingly public spat with the Russian military leadership.
Prigozhin has poured scathing criticism on Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and army chief of staff Valery Gerasimov, accusing them of being incompetent and causing Moscow's large-scale losses in the conflict in Ukraine.
Prigozhin's influence has risen hugely during Moscow's Ukraine offensive.
He had previously said Wagner fighters would pull out by 25 May.
Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Wagner and the Russian army on the alleged conquest.
But Zelensky said at the G7 summit on Sunday that Bakhmut was "not occupied" by Russia.
Both sides are believed to have suffered huge losses in the battle for Bakhmut, the longest and bloodiest in Moscow's offensive.
Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant reconnected
The occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has been reconnected to Ukraine's electricity grid again after being offline for several hours, officials in Kyiv said on Monday.
Earlier, Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom had accused Russia of carrying out attacks that caused a power cut.
It said it was the seventh time the plant entered "blackout mode" since Moscow's troops took control in March 2022.
"The station is switching to power from the Ukrainian energy system," Ukrenergo, Ukraine's state grid operator, said in a statement later Monday.
"Despite the enemy's morning attack, Ukraine's energy system is operating in a stable fashion," Ukrenergo said, adding that there was enough electricity to "cover the needs of consumers".
Located in the southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, the six-reactor plant is the largest in Europe.
The grid operator said that in the eastern region of Dnipro, high-voltage lines had been damaged as a result of Moscow's latest strikes.
The last power cut at Zaporizhzhia had been caused by another wave of Russian missile attacks, Energoatom said.
The UN's nuclear chief Rafael Grossi, who has tried to negotiate with both sides to reach a deal on the safety of the plant, said it was the seventh power cut at the huge nuclear facility during the war.
"Nuclear safety situation at the plant extremely vulnerable," he said on Twitter.
"We must agree to protect plant now; this situation cannot continue."
Zaporizhzhia used to supply around 20% of Ukraine's electricity and continued to function in the early months of Russia's offensive despite frequent shelling, before halting power production in September.
None of its six Soviet-era reactors has since generated electricity, but the facility remains connected to the Ukrainian power grid for its own needs, notably to cool the reactors.
F-16 jets will not undermine Russia's goals
Senior Russian diplomats have said that the transfer of F-16 jets to Ukraine would raise the question of NATO's role in the conflict and would not undermine Russia's military goals.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden endorsed training programs for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured Mr Biden that the aircraft would not be used to go into Russian territory.
"There is no infrastructure for the operation of the F-16 in Ukraine and the needed number of pilots and maintenance personnel is not there either," Russia's ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, said in remarks published on the embassy's Telegram messaging channel.
"What will happen if the American fighters take off from NATO airfields, controlled by foreign 'volunteers'?"
Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said any transfer of the US jets to Ukraine would be "absolutely pointless and stupid", state-owned news agency RIA reported.
"These efforts are completely useless and meaningless: our capabilities are such that all the goals of the special military operation will certainly be achieved", Mr Ryabkov was cited by RIA as saying, using Moscow's preferred term for the conflict.
Mr Antonov also said that any Ukrainian strike on the Crimea region would be considered a strike on Russia.
"It is important that the United States be fully aware of the Russian response", Mr Antonov said.
Ukraine has intensified its strikes on Russian-held targets especially on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Mr Antonov also reiterated a Russian accusation against the United States of subjecting Western countries to its agenda.
"Washington completely subordinated the G7 members to its own policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine," Mr Antonov said, adding that the United States wanted a "strategic defeat" for Russia.
During their summit on the weekend in Japan, the G7 countries signalled long-term support for Ukraine.
President Zelensky, who also attended the gathering, said he was confident that Ukraine would receive supplies of the F-16.
