(Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that the Russian army is making a pretence of an Easter ceasefire declared by President Vladimir Putin, continuing overnight attempts to inflict front-line losses on Ukraine.
“In general, as of Easter morning, we can say that the Russian army is trying to create a general impression of a ceasefire, but in some places it does not abandon individual attempts to advance and inflict losses on Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said in a post on social media.
Putin, hours before heading to an Orthodox Easter service late on Saturday, announced the surprise one-day ceasefire, ordering his forces to “stop all military activity” along the front line in the three-year-old war.
The gesture followed a U.S. announcement that it could abandon peace talks within days unless Moscow and Kyiv showed they were serious about negotiating.
Fighting was to stop from 6 p.m. Moscow time (1500 GMT) on Saturday until midnight on Sunday night, Putin said.
But Zelenskiy said there had been hundreds of instances of shelling on Saturday evening. Early on Sunday, Ukrainian forces reported 59 instances of shelling and five assault attempts along the front line, he said.
“Russia must fully comply with the conditions of silence,” Zelenskiy said.
He reiterated that Kyiv was willing to extend the ceasefire for 30 days but said that if Russia kept fighting on Sunday, so would Ukraine.
“Ukraine will continue to act in a mirror manner,” he said.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by William Mallard)
