Ukraine, Russia report civilian attacks during second day of truce

Despite a lull in air raids, both sides reported multiple civilian casualties.

Russian strikes on eastern Ukraine injured at least nine people, while Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s Belgorod border region injured four others, officials on both sides said.

In Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian drone strikes injured a three-year-old girl and a 23-year-old rescue worker, the region’s governor Oleksandr Ganzha said.

“The rescue workers were en route to the village of Myrivska to assist local residents when their fire and rescue vehicle was attacked by an enemy drone,” he said.

Russian strikes on the southern Kherson region injured four people, including a 19-year-old and a 53-year-old city council worker, authorities said, while the governor of the neighboring Mykolaiv region reported two injured in a drone attack on a civilian car.

A Russian drone also injured a man in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, the region’s governor said.

In Russia’s Belgorod region, Ukrainian attacks wounded four people including a border guard, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.

Both sides also accused each other of violating the ceasefire on the front line.

The Russian defense ministry on Sunday accused Ukraine of “16,071 ceasefire violations” over a 24-hour period, including thousands of drone strikes.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, accused Russia of conducting assault operations on the battlefield.

“On the front line, the Russian army is not complying with the ceasefire and is not even really trying to,” he said in his evening address.

Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, the war in Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people and spiralled into Europe’s deadliest since World War II.

United States-mediated talks on ending the fighting have shown little progress since February, when Washington shifted focus to its war with Iran.