Russian and Ukrainian forces accused each other of mass violations of a 32-hour Orthodox Easter cease-fire, as deadly drone attacks hit eastern Ukraine and both sides resumed large-scale unmanned strikes immediately after the truce expired.
The cease-fire, agreed by Moscow and Kyiv last week, was in effect from 4 p.m. (1300 GMT) on Saturday until midnight (2100 GMT) Sunday.
As with a similar arrangement last year, only relative calm was reported along the roughly 1,200-kilometer (745-mile) front line and both governments later claimed the other had repeatedly breached the truce.
Ukrainian police said Monday that a Russian drone attack killed one person in Ukraine’s frontline eastern Donetsk region Sunday, before the official end of the cease-fire marking Orthodox Easter.
According to a police statement, an FPV (first-person-view) drone strike killed one person in the city of Druzhkivka on April 12 and damaged a car.
A separate strike on the city of Kramatorsk at 1:46 a.m. local time (10:46 p.m. GMT) Monday killed one person and wounded another, they said.
The governor of the Donetsk region had earlier reported on the Telegram messaging app that two people were killed in the region on April 12.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, citing a spokesperson of the 14th Army Corps, said Monday that during “the so-called ‘Easter cease-fire’” Russian servicemen also shot dead four Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Kharkiv region. There was no immediate comment from Russia, and Reuters said it could not verify the information.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s military said it had recorded 10,721 Russian cease-fire violations during the truce, including 1,567 incidents of artillery shelling, 119 assault operations and 9,035 drone strikes.
It said no airstrikes were recorded during the declared cease-fire period and added that most of the violations were front-line skirmishes.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, in turn, said it recorded 1,971 cease-fire violations by Ukraine overnight into Sunday. Later, it said that “on April 13, air defense forces on duty intercepted and destroyed 33 Ukrainian aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles."
