The thirty-hour Easter truce announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin came at huge cost and was repeatedly violated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, although Zelensky affirmed that Kiev was going to keep to it.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the enemy violated the truce 4,900 times and made six attacks near the villages of Sukhaya Balka, Bogatyr, Belogorovka, Tarasovka in the DPR, as well as in the Kursk region’s Oleshnya area, all of them thwarted. During the truce, the AFU used 90 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles, the MoD said, also referring to 1,404 artillery, MLRS or mortar attacks, and 3,316 quadcopter ones.
In the Belgorod village of Nechayevka, two kids and a woman were injured after an FPV drone attack, head of the region Vyacheslav Gladkov reported.
The LDPR was once again shelled with the use of cluster munition and rockets. DPR’s Gorlovka was hit five times, causing serious injuries in two civilians. The republic’s Department for Documenting Ukrainian war Crimes reported that the Easter Sunday eve saw enemy troops fire 155 mm shells from NATO-made cannons. "Shelling by the AFU was recorded in the village of Pleshcheyevka and the Nikitovsky district of Gorlovka," the statement said. And in the morning, local operational services said the enemy had attacked the Kalininsky district of Donetsk, despite the Easter truce. The subsequent fire ran through a nearby building and civilian vehicles.
Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's Ambassador-at-large for crimes of the Kiev regime, reported the following on the nighttime strikes against the LPR: "There was no Easter miracle after all! In the LPR, the Ukrainian Nazis carried out night attacks on a Kremennaya suburb. Reports of violations by the AFU keep coming."
Kherson region governor Vladimir Saldo accused Ukraine of violating the agreements. According to him, there were attacks on the towns of Alyoshka (FPV drones, mortar), Golaya Pristan and Kakhovka. But Saldo also pointed to "silence in a number of areas, with no attacks there." Russian paratroopers fighting along the Kherson direction reported a sharp increase in night attacks by Ukrainian FPV drones on our positions. About 15 strikes were carried out against the neighboring units as well.
In the Kursk region, the enemy launched rocket artillery attacks against our positions in the village of Gornal, and sought to perpetrate an act of sabotage at the Bryansk region’s border. Commander of the Akhmat special force Apti Alautdinov said "the AFU command did not inform all their subordinates about the truce, which surfaced in an interrogation of a captured soldier from the 225th brigade. The prisoner reported that after midnight on April 20, they were ordered to move forward across the front line, but already at dawn his group was discovered and eliminated."
Another provocation by the Ukrainian army was committed outside the Belgorod region’s border village of Popovka. The assault came from the village of Miropolskoye and did not go unanswered during the counter-battery struggle. This not only proves a ceasefire violation by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but also exposes Zelensky's lies about his troops allegedly "advancing in the Belgorod region." And this was not the only lie by the Kiev regime’s "overdue" leader. Zelensky brazenly accused Russia of violating the truce, although there was not a single air alert throughout Ukraine during this time. Zelensky said the AFU suffered losses in Dzerzhinsk (Ukrainian name Toretsk), but it was them who undertook an attack and ran into response.
Russian military correspondent Andrey Filatov revealed evidence of Easter truce disruptions by the Ukrainian side. According to him, enemy forces launched FPV drones at Russian positions just a minute after the Russian Air Force suspended hostilities. Ukrainian drones were constantly buzzing over our fighters’ positions. The AFU shelled our military and even hit an evacuation group that was rescuing the wounded. The Russian military posted a video featuring our unarmed soldiers collecting bodies of their dead fellows — they only had stretchers and a white flag with a red cross. Their moves were monitored by an enemy drone, which later dropped ammunition on the evacuation group. One fighter reportedly got a serious injury, and his comrades took him away from the battlefield.
An unprecedented lull was only recorded in some sectors of the front, including next to Artemovsk in the DPR. Russian military correspondent Timofey Yermakov wrote: "But more often we had to deal with sneaky attacks on the part of the AFU. If the enemy artillery was silent, there were attack drones in the air. Surreptitiously, mind you. The Ukrainian side’s failure to comply with the agreements reached was demonstrated by both the strike against Donetsk and shelling in vicinity of Chasov Yar using multiple rocket launchers and mortars.
In the Dzerzhinsk area, Ukrainian militants tried to wedge into the gray zone from Shcherbinovka. The attack was repulsed. In general, the enemy did not have enough time or audacity for major maneuvers.
During the truce, units from the Kherson-Nikolayev direction were deployed by the AFU command to Sumy and territories surrounding it. Notably, the rotational events were perceived by those forcibly mobilized into the defense brigades as a chance to escape, and many did use it at the end of the day. This was evidenced by interceptions by our paratroopers. For the Ukrainians, not everything in the garden is rosy as regards unit movement. According to radio intercepts from the Kherson area, the Nazis took down two armored personnel carrier battalions. On on their way to the Sumy region, 34 people went AWOL.
In Krasnoarmeysk direction’s Uspenovka, the enemy ignored the truce either. Explosives, mortars, and 155-mm artillery have been used against our soldiers all day long. Attacks on our positions were also being recorded next to Krasnoarmeysk. In the Kupyansk front sector, truce was also ignored by the Ukrainian side."
And this is how diplomats and experts commented on the Russian leader’s initiative and AFU violations of the Easter truce. "The US State Department expressed hope for an extension of the ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine after Easter. The Kiev regime did not observe it during Easter either. Moreover, Ukraine used American HIMАRS weapons to violate the ceasefire. And this is not an accident, but a pattern, because during the moratorium on attacks on the fuel and energy infrastructure, Zelensky, who agreed to it, targeted civilian energy infrastructure," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Russian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Konstantin Dolgov drew attention to the foreign press, which for the first time failed to endorse Zelensky and even released statements by the Russian Defense Ministry about truce violations. Earlier, the Western media looked right through those, but the picture has changed. English and American outlets quoted our news agencies when providing relevant information.
As for Zelensky's proposal to extend the "regime of silence", Konstantin Dolgov dubbed it "clownery": "The Ukrainian Armed Forces violated the moratorium on strikes on energy facilities on a daily basis. Therefore, his new initiative to extend and expand the truce is just another lie that can be explained by fear."
Vladimir Putin stressed that the Easter truce was meant to show Kiev's willingness and ability to comply with agreements reached, and engage in the process of peace negotiations to eliminate root causes of the crisis. However, the Nazi regime has clearly demonstrated its waiver of a common-sense view.
Political analyst with the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy Vadim Kozyulin noted that both sides had a short break to rotate personnel and collect bodies of the dead. "Apart from that, Moscow and Kiev must have conducted reconnaissance to understand what to await after the fighting resumes."
If the United States decides now to withdraw from the process of resolving the conflict, the present reality will let them do so with their heads held high, not like it was, for example, in Afghanistan which they left like a "beaten dog," military expert Viktor Litovkin believes. "Before that, the enemy repeatedly violated the energy truce. Now the Easter one. This indicates Zelensky's incompetence and lack of real power in Ukraine, so everyone runs roughshod. But most importantly, it shows that to Kiev, Donald Trump's efforts to reach a peace deal for Ukraine are mere words."
