Ukraine piled pressure on Russia Tuesday after announcing its own truce in response to Russia’s demand for a ceasefire to coincide with its annual World War II Victory Day commemorations.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said that holding a ceasefire between May 8-9 so Moscow could mark the celebration was “not serious”, and hit back with his own truce starting midnight (2100 GMT) on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Russia has threatened a “massive missile strike” on Kyiv if Ukraine violates its Victory Day ceasefire.<\/p>\n
The quarrelling between the two sides comes with a lull in US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, as Washington shifts its focus to conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Russian strikes killed nine people across Ukraine on Monday, according to Ukrainian officials, while a Ukrainian drone crashed into a high-rise building in an upscale Moscow neighbourhood overnight.<\/p>\n
“In accordance with a decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, Vladimir Putin, a ceasefire has been declared from May 8\u20139, 2026… We hope that the Ukrainian side will follow suit,” the Russian defence ministry said in a post on state-backed messaging service MAX.<\/p>\n
“If the Kyiv regime attempts to implement its criminal plans to disrupt the celebration of the 81st anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Russian Armed Forces will launch a retaliatory, massive missile strike on the centre of Kyiv,” it added.<\/p>\n
“We warn the civilian population of Kyiv and employees of foreign diplomatic missions of the need to leave the city promptly.”<\/p>\n
Russia marks World War II Victory Day each year with a massive military parade through Red Square.<\/p>\n
“As of today, there has been no official appeal to Ukraine regarding the modality of a cessation of hostilities that is being claimed on Russian social media,” Zelensky said in a post on X.<\/p>\n
“We believe that human life is far more valuable than any anniversary ‘celebration’.<\/p>\n
In this regard, we are announcing a ceasefire regime starting at 00:00 (2100 GMT) on the night of May 5\u20136,” he added.<\/p>\n
He did not specify how long the ceasefire would last.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy\u00a0Sybiga also condemned Moscow’s truce, saying: “Peace cannot wait until ‘parades’ and ‘celebrations'”.<\/p>\n
“If Moscow is prepared to end hostilities, it can do so already tomorrow night,” Sybiga posted on X on Monday.<\/p>\n
He said Zelensky’s truce was a “serious proposal to end the war and turn to diplomacy”.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian leader later landed in the Gulf nation of Bahrain for talks on “security cooperation”, a source in the Ukrainian delegation told AFP.<\/p>\n
– Deadly attacks –<\/p>\n
Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least nine people on Monday, according to Ukrainian officials.<\/p>\n
A Russian ballistic missile attack on the town of Merefa — outside Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv — killed seven civilians and wounded dozens earlier Monday, regional authorities said.<\/p>\n
AFP journalists in Merefa saw several bodies strewn in the street, covered by blankets and white sheets — with shops, houses and cars damaged.<\/p>\n
A separate Russian strike on the village of Vilnyansk in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed two others, the region’s governor Ivan Fedorov said.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, a married couple was killed: a 51-year-old man and a 62-year-old woman,” Fedorov said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their 31-year-old son was wounded in the strike, along with three other people, he added.<\/p>\n
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone killed a civilian in the border region of Belgorod, governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.<\/p>\n
A Ukrainian drone also hit a residential high-rise building in an upscale Moscow neighbourhood overnight, the Russian capital’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.<\/p>\n
– Russia advances slow –<\/p>\n
Russia lost more territory than it gained in Ukraine\u00a0in April for the first time since a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, an AFP analysis of data\u00a0from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) showed.<\/p>\n
Moscow ceded control of about 120 square kilometres (46 square miles) between March and April, the ISW data showed.<\/p>\n
Despite the fighting at the front reaching a near stalemate, intense and deadly drone-dominated attacks have continued unabated in recent months.<\/p>\n
Russia’s advances have slowed since late 2025, as communication issues in the Russian army combined with Ukrainian counterattacks helped Kyiv make localised breakthroughs in the southeast.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian army’s net gains — their first in more than two years — were marginal however, representing only 0.02 percent of Ukrainian territory, the data showed.<\/p>\n
Moscow currently occupies just over 19 percent of Ukraine, the majority of which it seized during the first weeks of its invasion in 2022.<\/p>\n
Approximately seven percent, including Crimea and areas in the Donbas region, were already under Russian or pro-Russian separatist control before the invasion.<\/p>\n
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