Ukraine and Russia Renew Drone Strikes After Easter Truce Ends

Hours after a brief Orthodox Easter truce expired, Ukraine and Russia returned to overnight drone warfare, with both sides trading accusations that the 32-hour pause had been violated on a massive scale.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 98 drones overnight and reported that air defence units shot down 87 of them.

Officials in Ukraine said an infrastructure site in the central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region was struck, adding that casualty details were still being established.

Russia, for its part, said that “on April 13, air defence forces on duty intercepted and destroyed 33 Ukrainian aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Yet, much like a similar arrangement last year, the ceasefire brought only limited quiet across the 1,200km front.

The Ukrainian military said it recorded more than 10,000 Russian violations, the bulk of them involving clashes along the front line.

At the same time, it said that “during the declared ceasefire period, no missile strikes, air strikes, or attack drone strikes (of the Shahed/Gerbera type) were recorded.”

Russia’s defence ministry, meanwhile, accused Kyiv of nearly 2,000 breaches during the same period.

“A total of 1,971 ceasefire violations by units of the Ukrainian armed forces were recorded between 4:00pm Moscow time on 12 April and 8:00 am on 12 April,” the ministry said on the state-pushed MAX messenger service.

According to Russia, Ukraine opened fire 258 times with artillery or tanks, carried out 1,329 FPV drone attacks and dropped “various types of munitions” on 375 occasions, chiefly using drones.

Volodymyr Zelensky called for a longer ceasefire in his evening address on Saturday

Russia also said the Ukrainian military mounted “three nighttime attacks” on Russian positions and made “four attempts to advance” along the frontline, adding that each was repelled.

In his Saturday evening address, Mr Zelensky urged that the ceasefire be extended and said Ukraine had put that proposal to Moscow.

But in remarks broadcast yesterday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed any extension unless the Ukrainian leader agreed to Russia’s “well-known” terms.

“Until Zelensky musters the courage to assume this responsibility, the special military operation will continue after the truce expires,” Mr Peskov said, using Moscow’s term for the war in Ukraine.

Even so, there were signs the pause had some effect, with the Ukrainian military saying it registered no long-range Shahed drone assaults, guided aerial bomb attacks or missile strikes.

Ukraine has faced near-nightly waves of Russian drones numbering in the hundreds, a pattern that has prompted retaliatory strikes by Kyiv.

In the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine, Lieutenant Colonel Vasyl Kobziak said yesterday morning that conditions in his sector were “rather calm”.

The 32-year-old officer said the truce had not been observed “fully”, but added that the lull gave soldiers from the 33rd Mechanised Brigade time to attend an Easter Sunday service outdoors in the bitter cold of the forest.

“Our comrades have the chance, as you can see, to have their Easter baskets blessed and to feel the warmth and joy of this holiday,” he said, referring to the tradition in which priests bless food and eggs.

Recent months have seen several rounds of US-brokered negotiations fail to reach a peace deal

In Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, Governor Alexander Khinshtein also accused Ukraine of violating the truce, saying a drone strike on a petrol station in the town of Lgov wounded three people, including a baby.

Several rounds of US-brokered negotiations in recent months have failed to move the two sides closer to a deal to halt the fighting, which began with Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Those efforts have slowed further since the outbreak of war in the Middle East, as Washington’s focus has shifted towards Iran.

But even before the Iran war, momentum towards a settlement in Ukraine had been limited by deep disagreements over territory.

Ukraine has proposed freezing the war along the current frontlines.

Russia has rejected that idea, insisting it wants all of the Donetsk region, even though part of it remains under Ukrainian control — a demand Kyiv says it cannot accept.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and uprooted millions from their homes, making it Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Russia, whose battlefield momentum has slowed since last year, has suffered heavy manpower losses for relatively modest territorial gains.

Moscow now controls just over 19% of Ukraine, most of it captured in the opening weeks of the war.