By Tom Balmforth and Yulia Dysa
KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine’s foreign minister said on Thursday Russia had repeatedly violated its own 3-day ceasefire hours after it began and called the initiative a “farce”, while Moscow said Kyiv had continued fighting.
There was, though, a drop-off in combat activity after the ceasefire announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin came into force in the early hours of Thursday, with a respite in the drone and missile attacks that had rattled Ukrainian cities earlier this week.
“Predictably, Putin’s ‘Parade ceasefire’ proves to be a farce,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X, referring to the truce which coincides with a May 9 parade on Moscow’s Red Square to commemorate the end of World War Two.
“Russian forces continue to attack across the entire frontline,” Sybiha wrote. “From midnight to midday, Russia committed 734 ceasefire violations and 63 assault operations, 23 of which are still ongoing.”
He said Kyiv was notifying the United States and European states about Russia’s actions.
The Russian defence ministry, cited by Interfax news agency, said that Ukraine, in turn, had carried out 488 attacks on Russian targets and twice tried to break through the border in the Kursk region.
The two sides did not immediately comment on each other’s battlefield reports, which Reuters could not independently confirm.
Ukraine has not committed to abide by the ceasefire, calling it a ruse by Putin to create the impression he wants to end the war, which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin says he is committed to achieving peace.
Reuters journalists with a Ukrainian drone unit near the front in eastern Ukraine said a small Russian infantry raiding party had tried to advance on Thursday, but been stopped by drones piloted by members of the unit.
Ukrainian soldiers observed the clash on a live feed streamed onto monitors in their bunker.
“The infantry are still coming,” said one of the soldiers in the unit, a 33-year-old who identified himself by his callsign, “Mikha.”
A second person in the same unit, who identified himself as Nazar, said in the six hours since the Russian ceasefire started, there had been three Russian strikes on his section of the front. Asked if the ceasefire was holding, he said: “The facts speak for themselves.”
A Ukrainian military spokesman said Russia had continued assaults in several areas on the eastern front and prosecutors said two people had been wounded along with the 55-year-old woman killed by bombs fired at the northern Sumy region.
As of 3:00 pm in Kyiv (1200 GMT), Ukrainian officials had shared no reports of Russian long-range missiles or drones in Ukraine’s airspace since the Kremlin-sponsored ceasefire kicked in at midnight.
The Russian ceasefire falls on the 80th anniversary of the World War Two defeat of Nazi Germany, for which Putin is hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders ahead of a military parade on Red Square on May 9.
Ukraine, like the West, marks the anniversary on May 8.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy marked the day by taking a rare walk in central Kyiv to pay his respects to fallen Ukrainian soldiers at a vast mound of Ukrainian flags planted on a grassy verge on the central square.
There was no sign of his security detail in the selfie video he filmed as he passed pedestrians on the city’s main drag, at one point pausing to say “hi” as cars tooted their horns and deriding Friday’s planned pomp-filled ceremony in Moscow.
“There will be a parade of cynicism. You simply cannot call it anything else. A parade of bile and lies. As if not dozens of allied states, but Putin personally defeated Nazism,” he said.
Ukraine launched successive drone attacks on Moscow this week, which had forced the closure of airports in the Russian capital and the grounding of airliners.
Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that his country stood by its offer to observe a 30-day ceasefire in the war with Russia to give diplomacy a chance but that Russia had not responded.
“This clearly and obviously demonstrates to everyone who the source of the war is,” he said in his nightly video address.
Zelenskiy’s top aide said Ukraine had held online talks with U.S., French, British and German senior officials and discussed ways to pressure Russia into agreeing to a 30-day ceasefire. He did not say when the talks took place.
(Additional reporting by Alina Smutko, Herbert Villarraga, Christian Lowe, Elizabeth Piper, Ron Popeski, Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Alexandra Hudson)
