• Nine evacuation corridors in the country’s east and south have been agreed, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said Sunday, two days after a Russian missile strike on a train station killed at least 50 people.
• A military convoy has been identified to the east of Kharkiv, where Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief warned of a potentially major offensive by Russian troops.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has appointed a new general to direct the war in Ukraine as his military shifts plans after a failure to take Kyiv, according to a US official and a European official.
• European officials said the Russians are feeling “self-imposed” pressure to achieve some sort of victory by May 9, the day Russia celebrates victory over Germany in World War II.
• Ukrainian forces dug in while Russia lined up more firepower Sunday and tapped a decorated general as war commander ahead of a potentially decisive showdown in eastern Ukraine that experts said could start within days with a full-scale offensive.
The outcome of that confrontation could determine the course of the war, which has flattened cities, killed untold thousands and isolated Moscow economically and politically. Questions remain about the ability of Russia’s depleted and demoralized forces to conquer much ground after their advance on the capital, Kyiv, was repelled by determined Ukrainian defenders.
