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Published On 12 Apr 2026<\/span>12 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of violating a truce in place for Orthodox Easter, as the war dragged on into its fifth year.<\/p>\n Both sides had agreed to observe the ceasefire for the religious holiday, with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordering the truce more than a week after Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed a halt to hostilities.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n But as with a similar agreement last year, only relative calm reigned along the 1,200km (745-mile) front line.<\/p>\n \u201cAs of 7:00 am on 12 April, 2,299 ceasefire violations were recorded. Specifically: 28 enemy assault actions, 479 enemy shellings, 747 strikes by attack drones \u2026 and 1,045 strikes by FPV drones,\u201d the Ukrainian military\u2019s general staff said in a post on Facebook.<\/p>\n In turn, Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defence accused Kyiv of nearly 2,000 breaches.<\/p>\n \u201cA total of 1,971 ceasefire violations by units of the Ukrainian armed forces were recorded between 4:00 pm Moscow time on April 12 and 8:00 am on April 12,\u201d the ministry said on the state-pushed MAX application.<\/p>\n The Russian ministry claimed Kyiv had fired 258 times using artillery or tanks, carried out 1,329 FPV drone strikes, and dropped \u201cvarious types of munitions\u201d on 375 occasions, notably via drones.<\/p>\n Moscow also accused the Ukrainian military of launching \u201cthree nighttime attacks\u201d against Russian positions and \u201cfour attempts to advance\u201d along the front line, while claiming to have thwarted each.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Kremlin said Russia would not extend the truce unless Kyiv accepts its terms.<\/p>\n \u201cSustainable peace can come when we secure our interests and achieve the goals we set from the very start. This can be done literally today. But Zelenskyy must accept these well-known solutions,\u201d Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian news agencies.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil Zelenskyy musters the courage to assume this responsibility, the special military operation will continue after the truce expires,\u201d Peskov added, referring to the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n He also said Russian troops still needed to take control of 17-18 percent of Ukraine\u2019s disputed Donetsk region.<\/p>\n However, in a sign that the truce had some effect, the Ukrainian army stressed that it had recorded no long-range Shahed drone attacks, guided aerial bombings or missile strikes.<\/p>\n Ukraine has had to deal with near-nightly barrages of hundreds of Russian drones, prompting retaliation from Kyiv.<\/p>\n In northeastern Ukraine\u2019s Kharkiv region, Lieutenant Colonel Vasyl Kobziak told the AFP news agency on Sunday morning that things were \u201crather calm\u201d in his sector.<\/p>\n While the 32-year-old officer said the truce had not been \u201cfully\u201d observed, the lull had allowed his soldiers of the 33rd Mechanised Brigade to attend an Easter Sunday mass outside in the freezing forest chill.<\/p>\n \u201cOur comrades have the chance, as you can see, to have their Easter baskets blessed and to feel the warmth and joy of this holiday,\u201d he told AFP, referring to the religious tradition of priests blessing food and eggs.<\/p>\n The truce had been due to last for 32 hours, from 4pm (13:00 GMT) on Saturday until the end of the day on Sunday, according to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n In Russia\u2019s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, Governor Alexander Khinshtein also accused Kyiv of breaking the ceasefire by attacking a petrol station in the town of Lgov with a drone, injuring three people, including a baby.<\/p>\n In his evening address on Saturday, Zelenskyy called for a longer ceasefire, insisting the ball was in Moscow\u2019s court.<\/p>\n A similar truce was announced in Ukraine for Orthodox Easter last year, only for both sides to accuse each other of numerous violations.<\/p>\n Recent months have seen several rounds of United States-brokered negotiations fail to bring the warring parties closer to an agreement to stop the fighting, triggered by Russia\u2019s February 2022 invasion.<\/p>\n The process has stalled further since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East, with Washington\u2019s attention having shifted towards Iran.<\/p>\n But even before the US-Israel war on Iran, progress towards a peace deal in Ukraine had been slow, due to differences over the issue of territory.<\/p>\n Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.<\/p>\n But Russia has rejected this, saying it wants the whole of the Donetsk region despite it being partly controlled by Ukraine \u2013 a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 12 Apr 202612 Apr 2026 Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of violating a truce in place for Orthodox Easter, as the war dragged on into its fifth year. Both sides had agreed to observe the ceasefire for the religious holiday, with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordering the truce more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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