Putin had ordered a halt to all military activity from Saturday late afternoon until 11pm CET on Sunday, just hours before attending an Orthodox Easter service.
“The Russian army is trying to create a general impression of a ceasefire,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media. But there have been hundreds of instances of shelling last night, he added.
Zelenskyy also cited Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who said the ceasefire did not apply to Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions.
Ukrainian forces reported 59 shelling incidents and five assault attempts early Sunday, mostly along the eastern front. The military confirmed that activity had decreased, but fighting continued.
“We didn’t hold out much hope that this would actually happen,” Viktor Trehubov, a military spokesperson for Ukraine’s eastern front, told the national television.
In Russian-controlled Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, at least three blasts were heard early on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported.
Further south, the governor of Kherson province said Russian air strikes began shortly before the truce was meant to take effect – and continued after.
“Unfortunately, we are not seeing any sort of calm here,” he wrote on Telegram.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said today that Ukraine had broken the Easter ceasefire declared by Russian more than a thousand times, Russian news agencies reported.
The ministry said that Ukrainian forces had shot at Russian positions 444 times while it had counted more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks, Interfax said.
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