MOSCOW, May 8 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Friday of violating a two-day ceasefire announced by Moscow to cover \u200cthe celebrations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.<\/p>\n
The Russian Defence \u200cMinistry said 264 Ukrainian drones had been downed in the early hours of Friday, while Moscow \u200bMayor Sergei Sobyanin said the capital had been targeted and officials said the Urals region of Perm had been attacked with drones.<\/p>\n
Russia announced a ceasefire for May 8 to 10, when it celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany \u200cand holds a military parade \u2060in Moscow.<\/p>\n
Russia had warned that any attempt by Ukraine to disrupt the celebrations would lead to a massive missile strike on \u2060Kyiv, and Moscow has told foreign diplomats to evacuate the Ukrainian capital ahead of any possible retaliation.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian forces continued to strike Ukrainian \u200bpositions during \u200bthe night on Friday, which he said \u200bshowed Russia has not made “even \u200ca token attempt to cease fire on the front.”<\/p>\n
He said that as of 7 a.m. local time (0400 GMT) there were more than 140 Russian strikes on Kyiv’s frontline positions. Russian forces carried out 10 assaults during the night and launched more than 850 drone strikes, he added.<\/p>\n
“As we did over the past \u200c24 hours, Ukraine will respond in kind today \u200bas well. We will defend our positions and \u200bpeople’s lives,” Zelenskiy said.<\/p>\n
Zelenskiy this \u200bweek, in response to Moscow’s announcement, had proposed an open-ended \u200cceasefire starting on May 6, which \u200bhe said Russia has \u200bviolated.<\/p>\n
Neither side agreed to the other’s proposals.<\/p>\n
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two, including many millions in Ukraine, but pushed \u200bNazi forces back to \u200cBerlin, where Adolf Hitler committed suicide and the red Soviet Victory \u200bBanner was raised over the Reichstag in May 1945.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Reuters; \u200bediting by Guy Faulconbridge and Lincoln Feast.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOSCOW, May 8 (Reuters) – Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Friday of violating a two-day ceasefire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1821,356,26,3656,5,1252,1504,1802,280,25,750,4367],"class_list":{"0":"post-16338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-ceasefire","9":"tag-kyiv","10":"tag-moscow","11":"tag-nazi-germany","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-russian-defence-ministry","14":"tag-russian-forces","15":"tag-sergei-sobyanin","16":"tag-soviet-union","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-ukrainian-president","19":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}