Russia, Ukraine in blame game as 30-hr Easter truce sees violations
Russia and Ukraine blamed each other on Sunday for breaking a one-day Easter ceasefire announced by President Vladimir Putin, with both sides accusing the other of carrying out hundreds of attacks.
Putin, who ordered thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, ordered Russian forces to “stop all military activity” along the front line in the three-year-old war until midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT) on Sunday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia was pretending to observe the Easter ceasefire, but had in fact continued hundreds of artillery attacks on Saturday night, with more assaults on Sunday.
Zelenskyy wrote on the X social media platform that Russia had launched 26 assaults from midnight until midday local time (0900 GMT).
“Either Putin does not have full control over his army, or the situation proves that in Russia, they have no intention of making a genuine move toward ending the war, and are only interested in favourable PR coverage,” his post said.
“Because this faith is in each other,” said Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, in a message filled with lyricism and emotion. “In those who stand next to you. In Ukrainian men, in Ukrainian women. Faith that evil may have its hour but God will have his day.”
Earlier he said the Russian army “is trying to create a general impression of a ceasefire”, while continuing to inflict losses on Ukraine’s front line.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine had broken the ceasefire more than 1,000 times, inflicting damage to infrastructure and causing some civilian deaths.
The ministry said Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times while it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks, including attacks on Crimea and on the Russian border areas of Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions.
“As a result, there are deaths and injuries among the civilian population, as well as damage to civilian facilities,” the ministry said.
Ukraine’s military said earlier on Sunday that activity on the front line had decreased. Some Russian military bloggers also said military activity along the frontline has substantially decreased.
The apparent failure to observe even an Easter ceasefire shows just how hard it will be for US President Donald Trump to achieve his aim of clinching a lasting deal to end what he calls the “bloodbath” of the war in Ukraine.
The US will walk away from efforts to broker a peace deal unless there are clear signs of progress soon, Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said on Friday.
Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly warned of the escalation risk of the war – which his administration now casts as a proxy conflict between the US and Russia, echoing Moscow’s stance.
Last month, after Ukraine accepted Trump’s proposal for a 30-day truce, Putin said crucial issues of verification had not been sorted out. Both Moscow and Kyiv have agreed to a moratorium on attacks on energy targets and at sea, which each accuses the other of breaking.
Zelenskyy reiterated that Kyiv was willing to extend the ceasefire for 30 days but said that if Russia kept fighting on Sunday, so would Ukraine.
Putin told his top general, Valery Gerasimov, to be ready to respond “in full” if Kyiv broke the truce.
Russia controls just under one-fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, and the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Putin, when announcing the ceasefire before heading to an Orthodox Easter service, said the truce would show whether or not Ukraine was ready or able to implement peace.
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