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| Reuters |
Ukraine and Russia have each accused one another of hundreds of violations of a short ceasefire coinciding with Orthdox Easter celebrations.
The Ukrainian military said on Sunday morning that Russian forces had committed 2,299 violations since the truce began at 16:00 local time (13:00 GMT) on Saturday - including shooting four unarmed soldiers.
The Russian defence ministry, in turn, said Ukrainian forces had committed 1,971 violations, including three attempted counter-attacks in Dnipropetrovsk region.
READ MORE: Russia and Ukraine agree to Orthodox Easter truce
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Easter "a time of peace" and stated that his country's forces would respond "symmetrically" to Russian attacks during the ceasefire. He added that he hoped the truce could be extended beyond Easter to facilitate peace negotiations which have all but stalled with the outbreak of war in the Middle East - but Russia rejected the idea, saying its attacks would resume on Monday.
According to the Ukrainian military, Russian troops carried out 28 attacks and nearly 2,000 drone strikes without using missiles or bombs. The local prosecutor's office said that Russian forces executed four Ukrainian soldiers in the north-eastern Kharkiv region after the ceasefire came into effect. They called the incident a "grave violation of international humanitarian law." The Ukrainian military claimed that the troops had been disarmed and were shot, calling it "another war crime committed by Russia."
The authorities in Ukraine have made public what appears to be a picture that was taken by a drone and shows four bodies lying in a clearing. Local authorities claim that a Russian drone struck an ambulance overnight in Ukraine's northern Sumy region, which borders Russia, injuring three medical professionals. Russia's defence ministry said Ukraine had launched three overnight attacks on positions in the Pokrovsk area and Otradne in Dnipropetrovsk region.
It also said four attempts by Ukrainian troops to advance in Sumy and Donetsk were "thwarted".
After repeatedly rejecting Ukraine's requests for a brief ceasefire, Russian President Vladimir Putin made the Easter ceasefire announcement earlier this week. According to Zelensky, his forces would act similarly. Earlier in the year, Putin acquiesced to a US request to halt strikes on energy infrastructure as Ukraine braced for bitterly cold temperatures.
In the early hours of Saturday's truce, sources from Ukraine and Russia made smaller accusations against one another before making much larger ones. On Saturday, the authorities of both Russia and Ukraine also made the announcement that they had each exchanged 175 prisoners of war, seven of whom were civilians.
Expectations for the ceasefire are low among Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on the front lines of the conflict, which has been raging since 2022. For a long time, Kyiv and its European allies have advocated for a more comprehensive ceasefire as a necessary first step toward putting an end to the full-scale invasion for good. However, Moscow has insisted on reaching a peace agreement first, which has led to accusations that it is not serious about putting an end to the fighting.
Source: BBC
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