Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of breaking Easter ceasefire, no extension seen
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Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of breaking Easter ceasefire, no extension seen
MOSCOW/KYIV (Reuters) - Russia and Ukraine blamed each other on Sunday for breaking a one-day Easter ceasefire declared by President Vladimir Putin, with both sides accusing the other of hundreds of attacks and the Kremlin saying there was no order for an extension.
Putin, who sent thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022, ordered his forces to stop all military activity along the front line in the three-year-old war until midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT) on Sunday.
Five hours before that expiry, TASS news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying there was no order from Putin to extend the ceasefire. "There were no other commands," Peskov was quoted as saying when asked if it could be prolonged.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy 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.
Russia launched 46 assaults from midnight until 4 p.m. local time (1300 GMT), including with heavy weapons, Zelenskiy wrote on the X social media platform.
"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," Zelenskiy posted.
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 the Russian border areas of the 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 frontline activity had declined substantially.
Reuters was unable to immediately verify the battlefield reports from either side.
The apparent failure to observe even an Easter ceasefire shows how hard it will be for U.S. President Donald Trump to achieve his aim of clinching a lasting deal to end what he calls the "bloodbath" of the Ukraine war.
