Russia and Ukraine accused each other on Saturday of violating the temporary ceasefire, with Vladimir Putin ensuring that he still has not received a proposal from Ukraine on the exchange of prisoners announced by Donald Trump.
The American president announced Friday evening a three-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia starting Saturday.
But “since the start of the day, the number of attacks carried out by the aggressor has reached 51”, indicated the Ukrainian general staff.
For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry declared that “despite the declaration of ceasefire, Ukrainian armed groups launched attacks using drones and artillery.”
Drones fired by Russia killed two civilians and injured three in the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions of central Ukraine, according to local authorities.
The prisoner exchange in question
Shortly after Donald Trump’s announcement on Friday, kyiv and Moscow confirmed having accepted the truce and the exchange of prisoners.
But Vladimir Putin assured Saturday evening that Russia had still not received a proposal from Ukraine regarding the exchange.
“We are counting on the Ukrainian side to respond to the proposal made by the President of the United States. Unfortunately, we have still not received any proposal to date,” Mr. Putin told journalists.
He also assured that the war in Ukraine was “coming to an end” and castigated Western countries for their support for kyiv.
He denounced on Saturday morning, during a brief speech on Red Square for the commemorations of May 9, 1945, the fact that his army was confronting “aggressive” forces supported by NATO in Ukraine.
The parade was marked by the absence of military equipment, such as tanks and missile launchers which usually march up Moscow’s central square.
The leader spoke in front of several hundred soldiers standing in Moscow’s main square. Soldiers from the North Korean army, which helped Moscow drive out Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region in the spring of 2025, took part in these commemorations.
Suspension d’internet
This parade took place under high security, with suspension of mobile internet in the center of Moscow.
These commemorations are a highly symbolic event allowing Vladimir Putin, in power for 26 years, to mobilize the memory of the Soviet victory and to rally the Russian population behind the military campaign in Ukraine.
“We must expel (the Ukrainians, editor’s note) from our territory,” Lidia, an 82-year-old Russian retiree, told AFP from Moscow, echoing the Kremlin’s speech which demands the annexation of regions in the east and south of Ukraine, including Donbass.
In kyiv, Mikhailo Porkhatchov, a 29-year-old Ukrainian, told him that the Russians are not respecting the truce. He says he spoke on Saturday morning with his parents, in Zaporizhia, about twenty kilometers from the front, who told him of “explosions” and air sirens in this Ukrainian city.
Only the leaders of Belarus, Malaysia and Laos and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico traveled to Moscow, according to the Kremlin.
Discussions resumed this week between Ukrainian and American negotiators in Florida.
These talks had taken a back seat since the start of the war in the Middle East. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped that American negotiators would soon come to Ukraine.
The large-scale Russian offensive on Ukraine launched in 2022 and entering its fifth year has left hundreds of thousands dead. It is the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.
This article has been automatically published. Sources: ats / afp
