Easter truce collapses
A short Easter ceasefire in Ukraine expired without stopping the fighting, with both Kyiv and Moscow accusing the other of large numbers of violations. Ukraine’s general staff said Russian forces committed 10,721 breaches — including artillery attacks, assaults and thousands of drone strikes — and Reuters reported a Russian drone strike killed one person in Donetsk before the truce formally ended. Different tallies from Ukrainian and Russian sources, and reports that Ukrainian forces pulled back in parts of Sumy oblast, underscore competing accounts of what happened during the pause. (independent.co.uk) (reuters.com) (kyivindependent.com)
The Easter ceasefire in Ukraine ended on April 13 after both sides said the fighting never really stopped. (reuters.com) Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces committed 10,721 violations during the 32-hour pause, including 1,202 artillery attacks, 119 assaults and 9,173 first-person-view drone strikes. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had not answered a Ukrainian proposal to extend the ceasefire for 30 days. (kyivindependent.com) Russia’s Defense Ministry gave a sharply lower count and said Ukrainian forces violated the truce 1,971 times. Moscow said Kyiv fired artillery or tank rounds 258 times, launched 1,329 first-person-view drone strikes and dropped munitions 375 times. (cbsnews.com) The truce lasted from 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 12, to midnight after Easter Sunday, April 13, according to the Kremlin announcement cited by Reuters and other outlets. Zelensky said Ukraine would mirror a real ceasefire, but Ukrainian officials said troops would return fire if attacked. (reuters.com) That left the pause looking less like a halt to the war than a brief test of whether either army would ease pressure along a front line that runs more than 1,000 kilometers. The accusations came as Russia kept pushing in eastern Ukraine and along the border in Sumy Oblast. (apnews.com) (kyivindependent.com) Reuters reported that a Russian first-person-view drone killed one person in Druzhkivka, in Donetsk Oblast, before the ceasefire formally expired. Ukrainian officials also reported other strikes during the holiday, including a drone attack on an ambulance in Sumy Oblast that injured three paramedics. (reuters.com) (independent.co.uk) At the same time, Ukrainian forces said they had pulled back from some villages in eastern Sumy Oblast to a new defensive line near Myropilske after heavier Russian pressure. The local military command said the move was meant to preserve troops and hold more favorable positions, while adding that the line near Myropilske had not changed on the DeepState battlefield map at the time of publication. (kyivindependent.com) The Easter pause was the latest short truce to collapse under competing battlefield claims and no agreed monitoring mechanism. With Kyiv and Moscow publishing different tallies within hours of the holiday, the war resumed on Monday looking much as it did before the bells rang. (reuters.com) (apnews.com)
