After more than three years of murderous war on the Ukrainian people, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a 30-hour unilateral ceasefire over the Easter weekend. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that although the air-raid sirens were silent, Moscow’s forces continued shelling Ukrainian positions. Kharkiv, above, was hit April 19. Just hours after the so-called ceasefire ended April 21, 96 Russian drone attacks targeted several regions, from Kyiv in the north to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south.
Putin’s announcement came after President Donald Trump said he was considering pulling back from trying to broker peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv.
The Ukrainian government has said it will comply with any genuine ceasefire, having agreed to an earlier U.S. proposal for a 30-day halt to fighting, which was followed by stepped-up assaults by Moscow. Zelensky renewed his call for a ceasefire after Putin’s Easter “truce.”
The U.S. administration wants an end to the war so it can normalize relations with Moscow, advance stability for Washington’s own interests in Europe and draw Moscow away from the closer ties it has established with Beijing, the U.S. rulers’ main rival. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the media April 18 that the administration would decide “in a matter of days whether or not [ending the war] is doable.”
Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine Feb. 24, 2022, and Moscow currently controls nearly 20% of Ukraine’s territory, including the southern Crimean Peninsula and parts of the southeast it seized in 2014.
The BBC and independent outlet Mediazona have traced the names of over 100,000 of Moscow’s troops who have been killed since the 2022 invasion. Putin’s sacrifice of Russian workers in uniform to advance his regime’s expansionist goals underscores why working people in Russia are the greatest potential allies of working people in Ukraine in the fight to defend the country’s sovereignty.