Russia and Ukraine swapped accusations of breaking a U.S.-brokered ceasefire Sunday, with both sides claiming to have suffered casualties in drone and artillery strikes over the last 24 hours.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia was neither observing the truce nor “even particularly trying to,” adding there had been no calm in front-line areas despite a lull in large-scale attacks. He pledged that Ukraine would retaliate to any aggression shown by Moscow.
“Yesterday and today, Ukraine refrained from long-range retaliatory actions in response to the absence of large-scale Russian attacks,” Zelensky said in an evening statement, emphasizing Ukraine’s increasing ability to hit targets deep inside Russia.
“We will continue to respond in the same mirror-like manner, and if the Russians decide to return to full-scale warfare, our response will be immediate and significant.”
Ivan Fedorov, head of Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, said one person had been killed and three others injured by Russian artillery and drone attacks in the last 24 hours. Sixteen other people were wounded in attacks across other regions of Ukraine, local officials said.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, accused Kyiv of committing more than 1,000 ceasefire violations, state media reported, citing a daily briefing. The ministry said Ukrainian forces had attacked civilian targets in several Russian regions and carried out strikes against Russian military positions on the front line.
Russia’s military had “responded in kind” to the ceasefire violations, the ministry said.
Two people were injured by Ukrainian shelling in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson region, the area’s Moscow-installed leader, Vladimir Saldo, said.
President Trump said Friday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to his request for a ceasefire running Saturday through Monday to mark Victory Day, the Russian celebration marking the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Trump said there would also be an exchange of prisoners, claiming that the break in fighting could be the “beginning of the end” of the war.
Zelensky, who had said Russian authorities “fear drones may buzz over Red Square” during Saturday’s Victory Day parade in Moscow, followed up on Trump’s statement by mockingly declaring Red Square temporarily off-limits for Ukrainian strikes to allow the parade to go ahead. The Kremlin shrugged off the comment as a “silly joke.”
In a notable shift this year, the Russian parade took place without tanks, missiles and other equipment put on display every year since 2008, aside from a traditional flyover of combat jets. Officials explained the change of format by the “current operational situation” and the threat of Ukrainian attacks.
Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said Sunday he expects U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — who have both taken a leading role in negotiations to end the war — to visit Moscow “soon enough.”
However, he stressed that Moscow would not move from its demand that Kyiv’s troops withdraw from Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. “Until [Ukraine] takes that step, we can hold several more rounds, dozens of rounds [of negotiations], but we’ll be stuck in the same place,” Ushakov said, according to the state news agency Tass.
Previous ceasefires, most recently at Orthodox Easter, have failed to produce any tangible results amid deep mistrust between Moscow and Kyiv more than four years after Russia launched its invasion of its neighbor.
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