Zelenskyy says Russia fired over 200 drones at Ukraine as truce expires
One killed and four others wounded in attacks on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, local administration chief says.
Russia and Ukraine have resumed air attacks after a United States-brokered three-day truce expired, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying more than 200 drones were used to attack Ukraine overnight.
Russian aerial attacks across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Tuesday morning killed at least one person and injured four others, according to regional administration chief Oleksandr Ganzha.
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Russian drones also hit energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region, causing outages, and struck residential buildings and a kindergarten in the Kyiv region, according to local authorities. Russia also carried out attacks on the regions of Kharkiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy and Chernihiv, according to authorities.
More than 200 long-range drones were used in the wave of attacks, Zelenskyy said. “Russia itself chose to end the partial silence that had lasted for several days,” he said in a post on X.
Russia’s Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Russia was resuming its offensive, telling reporters “the humanitarian ceasefire ended” and “the special military operation is continuing.”
Russia’s military, meanwhile, said its defences downed 27 Ukrainian drones over the regions of Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov.
The exchange of aerial attacks came after the expiry of a 72-hour truce announced by US President Donald Trump on Friday, which he said he hoped would mark “the beginning of the end” of Russia’s four-year war on Ukraine.
The May 9-11 truce overlapped with Russia’s Victory Day, which celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany in the second world war.
But even before it expired, both sides accused each other of violating the truce by attacking civilians.
Zelenskyy said Russia was neither observing the truce nor “even particularly trying to”, adding there had been no calm in front-line areas despite a lull in large-scale attacks.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence accused Ukraine of committing more than 1,000 ceasefire violations. It said Ukrainian forces attacked civilian targets in several Russian regions and carried out strikes against Russian military positions on the front line.
Russia’s military had “responded in kind” to the ceasefire violations, according to the Defence Ministry.
US-backed negotiations on ending the Russia-Ukraine war have made little headway and have been largely sidelined by the crisis in the Middle East amid the US-Israel war on Iran. Trump’s ceasefire announcement had raised some hope that US-led talks to end Russia’s invasion could be resumed.
On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested for the first time that the Ukraine war may be “coming to an end” and expressed a willingness to meet Zelenskyy in Moscow or a neutral country once an agreement to end the war is finalised. He also accused the “arrogant” West of risking a global conflict, warning that Russia’s “strategic forces” are combat-ready.
Addressing Putin’s war comments on Tuesday, Peskov said it was too early to talk about “specifics” of ending the war. “The accumulated groundwork in terms of the peace process allows us to say that the end is drawing near. But in this context, it is not possible at the moment to speak about any specifics,” he said.