Rosenberg: Is Putin\u2019s \u2018Easter truce\u2019 cause for scepticism or chance for peace?<\/a><\/p>\nRussia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, and currently controls about 20% Ukraine\u2019s territory, including the southern Crimea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.<\/p>\n
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people \u2013 the vast majority of them soldiers \u2013 have been killed or injured on all sides since 2022.<\/p>\n
Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full and unconditional ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, President Putin said there would be an end to all hostilities from 18:00 Moscow time (15:00 GMT) on Saturday until midnight on Sunday. Kyiv said it would also adhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor this period, I order all military actions to cease,\u201d Putin said in his announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky said late on Sunday that there was a total of 1,882 cases of Russian shelling, 812 of which involved heavy weaponry, according to a report from Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi.<\/p>\n
The president said the heaviest shelling and assaults were in eastern Ukraine near the besieged city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nature of Ukrainian actions will continue to be mirrored: we will respond to silence with silence, our strikes will be to protect against Russian strikes,\u201d Zelensky said.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Sunday, he said that \u201cthere were no air raid alerts today\u201d, referring to Russia\u2019s daily drone and missile strikes against Ukraine.<\/p>\n
He proposed \u201cto cease any strikes using long-range drones and missiles on civilian infrastructure for a period of at least 30 days, with the possibility of extension\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zelensky also said Putin\u2019s declaration of a truce amounted to a \u201cPR\u201d exercise and his words were \u201cempty\u201d. He accused the Kremlin of trying to create \u201ca general impression of a ceasefire\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Easter has clearly demonstrated that the only source of this war, and the reason it drags on, is Russia,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n
The Russian defence ministry insisted its troops had \u201cstrictly observed the ceasefire\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine of using US-supplied Himars missiles during the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
The surprise ceasefire announcement came shortly after US\u00a0Trump threatened to \u201ctake a pass\u201d on brokering further Russia-Ukraine peace talks.<\/a><\/p>\nHowever, a state department spokesperson said on Sunday that Washington remained \u201ccommitted to achieving a full and comprehensive ceasefire\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is long past time to stop the death and destruction and end this war,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
April 21 \u2013 Ukraine\u2019s military has reported Russian drone attacks on several regions overnight, just hours after the end of a 30-hour \u201cEaster truce\u201d declared by Moscow. Ukraine\u2019s air force issued raid alerts for the Kyiv region, as well as Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia. In the southern city of Mykolaiv, Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}