Ukrainians gather together to mark Easter as Zelensky accuses Russia of breaking Putin’s ‘truce’
Ukrainians gathered together to mark Easter, with little faith in the possibility of a ceasefire with Russia as both sides accused the other of breaking a temporary truce.
Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a unilateral 30-hour ceasefire from Saturday evening to midnight on Easter Sunday, citing humanitarian reasons.
But Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accused Mr Putin of pretending to observe the truce while carrying out hundreds of artillery attacks on Saturday night, followed by more on Sunday.
Late on Sunday, Mr Zelensky said there had been 1,355 cases of Russian shelling, 713 of which involved heavy weaponry, according to his Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“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,” Mr Zelensky posted on social media.
“However, there were no air raid alerts today. Hence, this is a format of ceasefire that has been achieved and that is the easiest to extend,” he said, proposing that Russia abandon drone and missile strikes on civilian targets for at least 30 days.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, said there was no order from Putin to extend the ceasefire.
Also on Sunday, Russia’s defence ministry claimed Ukraine had broken the Easter ceasefire more than a thousand times, inflicting damages to infrastructure and causing 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 on Crimea and the Russian border areas of the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump, posting on social media just before the truce ended, said “hopefully Russia and Ukraine will make a deal this week”. The US president has been pushing for a deal for several weeks and on Friday threatened to walk away due to a lack of progress.
In northern Ukraine on Sunday, dozens of Ukrainian civilians gathered outside the ruins of a damaged church to mark Easter, casting doubt on a stop to the fighting with Russia.
In the village of Lukashivka in the Chernihiv region, briefly occupied by Russian forces in 2022, parishioners of the damaged Ascension Church arrived early at a small makeshift wooden church built last year to cater to the needs of the faithful, holding traditional Easter baskets and cakes to have them blessed.
As the sun rose, they stood quietly in the spring chill, the roofless silhouette of the wrecked church behind them, its pale walls scarred by shell fragments. The church’s priest Serhii Zezul walked among them, shouting “Christ is risen!” as he sprinkled holy water over the baskets – his voice nearly drowned out by the hum of a nearby generator.
More people than usual gathered in the damaged church’s courtyard on Sunday. Some said they drove from cities to Lukashivka to mark Easter, fearing Russian forces might target large gatherings, especially after a recent string of missile strikes killed dozens of civilians.
