Ukraine and Russia Trade Accusations of Thousands of Ceasefire Violations

On April 10, 2026, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to observe a 32-hour ceasefire for the Orthodox Easter holiday, effective from 4:00 p.m. Moscow time on Saturday, April 11, through midnight on Sunday, April 12 [1]. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to honor the pause — but with a condition: "The absence of Russian strikes in the air, on land, and at sea will mean no response from our side" [2]. By 7:00 a.m. on April 12, with the ceasefire not yet half over, both sides were trading accusations of thousands of violations, and the truce had collapsed in all but name [3].

The episode was not an aberration. It was a repeat of a pattern that dates back over a decade — one that raises hard questions about the purpose of ceasefires neither side intends to honor, the absence of any neutral body to verify claims, and what conditions would actually be needed for a durable halt to fighting along Europe's longest active front line.

The Numbers: Dueling Violation Counts

Ukraine's General Staff reported 2,299 ceasefire violations by Russian forces as of 7:00 a.m. on April 12, broken down as follows: 1,045 FPV (first-person-view) drone strikes, 747 attack drone strikes, 479 shellings, and 28 assault actions [3]. The Ukrainian military noted that no long-range missiles, guided aerial bombs, or Shahed-type kamikaze drones were used — a distinction suggesting Russia may have pulled back its most destructive weapons while continuing lower-level attacks [4].

Source: Ukrainian General Staff / Russian MoD

Data as of Apr 12, 2026CSV

Russia's Defense Ministry, in turn, recorded 1,971 violations by Ukrainian forces between 4:00 p.m. on April 11 and 8:00 a.m. on April 12. Moscow's breakdown included 1,329 FPV drone strikes, 375 drone-dropped munitions, and 258 instances of artillery or tank fire [5].

Source: Ukrainian General Staff

Data as of Apr 12, 2026CSV

Source: Russian Defense Ministry

Data as of Apr 12, 2026CSV

The two tallies share a striking feature: both sides report that FPV drones — small, cheap, expendable quadcopters guided by a pilot wearing goggles — account for the majority of violations. This reflects the transformation of the conflict since 2022, in which drones have become the dominant weapon at the tactical level, responsible for more front-line casualties than any other system [4].

How the Two Sides Count — and Why It Matters

Neither Ukraine nor Russia has published a detailed methodology for how it tallies ceasefire violations. Ukraine's General Staff issues periodic updates through official social media channels, categorizing incidents by weapon type. Russia's Defense Ministry releases aggregate figures through state media briefings [5]. There is no shared definition of what constitutes a single "violation" — whether one drone strike on a position counts the same as a sustained artillery barrage on a settlement. The asymmetry in categories (Ukraine reports "assault actions" as a separate line item; Russia does not) makes direct comparison difficult.

This methodological opacity matters because the numbers are widely cited by international media as fact, often without the caveat that they are self-reported by combatants with obvious incentives to inflate the other side's count and minimize their own [3][5]. Without independent verification, the figures function less as data and more as competing narratives.

The Monitoring Gap: Who Is Counting?

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) operated a Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine from 2014 until March 31, 2022, when Russia blocked the renewal of its mandate [6]. At its peak, the SMM deployed over 1,300 monitors, along with drones, cameras, and acoustic sensors, to track ceasefire violations along the Donbas contact line. Its daily reports provided the closest thing to an independent, granular record of who was shooting at whom [7].

Since the SMM's closure, no comparable monitoring body has operated on the front line. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) tracks civilian casualties and conditions but does not perform military ceasefire monitoring [8]. The International Committee of the Red Cross has access to both sides for humanitarian purposes but does not publicly report on ceasefire compliance.

The result is a verification vacuum. When Ukraine says 2,299 violations occurred and Russia says 1,971, there is no neutral referee to adjudicate. Journalists reporting on the ceasefire are, in effect, relaying each side's press releases [3][5].

Third-Party Verification Efforts

Some independent actors have attempted to fill the gap. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) publishes weekly updates on the war in Ukraine, coding individual events based on media reports, social media, and local sources [9]. Bellingcat and other open-source intelligence (OSINT) groups have used satellite imagery and geolocated video to verify specific strikes and damage claims throughout the war [10]. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) publishes daily assessments that cross-reference Ukrainian and Russian claims against observable evidence.

However, none of these organizations operate as real-time ceasefire monitors. Their work is retrospective — confirming or debunking specific incidents days or weeks after they occur. For the Easter ceasefire, no third-party organization has published an independent tally of violations, and the speed at which incidents accumulated (over 4,000 combined claims in roughly 15 hours) would overwhelm any OSINT-based verification effort.

Satellite imagery can confirm structural damage to buildings and infrastructure but cannot attribute a specific strike to a specific weapon fired at a specific time — the level of detail needed to adjudicate ceasefire violations [10]. Acoustic sensor networks, which the OSCE previously used to detect artillery fire, no longer exist along the contact line [7].

Civilian Impact During the Ceasefire Window

The ceasefire did not prevent civilian harm. In the hours before the truce began, Russian drone strikes killed at least two people in Odesa and wounded two others, damaging apartment buildings and a kindergarten [11]. In Kherson, a public trolley bus driver was killed by a drone strike less than an hour before the ceasefire's start time [4]. The Ukrainian Air Force reported intercepting 133 of 160 Russian drones launched overnight on April 10-11, suggesting a surge in activity just ahead of the ceasefire window [11].

During the ceasefire itself, the continued drone and shelling activity recorded by both sides indicates that front-line violence did not cease. Ukraine's reporting that no long-range missiles or Shahed drones were used during the ceasefire period suggests a partial reduction in the most destructive categories of attack [3], but the sustained FPV drone activity — over 1,000 strikes by Ukraine's count — means troops in forward positions faced continuous threat.

Whether the ceasefire produced any net reduction in violence compared to a typical 32-hour period is difficult to assess without baseline data that neither side has published. The absence of strategic-level strikes (missiles, guided bombs) represents a measurable change from recent weeks, but the volume of tactical-level drone and artillery activity appears broadly consistent with the ongoing tempo of the war [4][5].

A Pattern of Broken Truces

The Easter 2026 ceasefire is the latest in a long series of failed truces. Between 2014 and 2022, at least 29 ceasefires were declared in the Donbas conflict, each nominally open-ended. None held [12]. President Zelenskyy has stated that Russia violated ceasefire agreements 25 times following its 2014 intervention in eastern Ukraine [13].

Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, formal ceasefire agreements have been absent, replaced by unilateral declarations tied to holidays. Putin declared a similar Easter ceasefire in 2025, which collapsed under the same pattern of mutual accusations [14]. A 72-hour ceasefire for Victory Day in May 2025 followed the same trajectory [15]. In each case, the declaring party — Russia — framed the truce as a gesture of goodwill tied to a religious or national holiday, while the opposing party treated it with skepticism rooted in prior experience.

The historical pattern is consistent: RAND Corporation research on ceasefire design notes that most ceasefires experience minor failures within 10 days, with larger breakdowns occurring between 65 and 193 days [16]. The Easter ceasefire did not survive its first night.

The Strategic Logic of Ceasefires Nobody Expects to Hold

If both sides know the ceasefire will be violated, why declare one? Analysts point to several strategic functions that extend beyond the battlefield.

For Russia, unilateral ceasefire declarations serve a diplomatic signaling role. According to a Foreign Policy analysis, Putin's ceasefire proposals "paint himself as the reasonable actor while framing Ukraine and the West as obstructing peace" [17]. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) described Russia's ceasefire messaging as calculated to "provide diplomatic cover for various governments to justify their neutrality, maintain trade relations, and refrain from joining the sanctions regime" [18]. The Victory Day ceasefire in 2025, for example, coincided with celebrations in Moscow attended by leaders from 27 countries, including China, Brazil, Egypt, and several African nations [15].

The domestic audience matters, too. By signaling willingness to pause hostilities, the Kremlin reinforces internal narratives of moral restraint and political legitimacy, even as military operations continue at the tactical level [17].

For Ukraine, the calculation is different. Zelenskyy had proposed an Easter ceasefire more than a week before Putin's announcement, a sequence that Euronews and other outlets reported as Russia appropriating Ukraine's own initiative [19]. By agreeing to the ceasefire while conditioning compliance on Russian behavior ("respond strictly in kind"), Ukraine positioned itself to claim the moral high ground if the truce collapsed — as it did [2].

The Legal Question: What Does a Unilateral Ceasefire Require?

Under international humanitarian law (IHL), the legal status of a unilateral ceasefire is ambiguous. The Lieber Institute at West Point has noted that the "subgenre" of rules governing ceasefires is "significantly underdeveloped" in IHL [20]. A ceasefire's principal legal effect is a prohibition on offensive military operations against the opposing party, but this obligation applies to parties that have agreed to the terms [20].

A unilateral ceasefire — declared by one side without the other's consent — does not, under prevailing legal interpretation, impose binding obligations on the non-declaring party. The Lawfare Institute's analysis of potential Russia-Ukraine ceasefires observed that "nothing can happen without both parties" and cautioned against treating unilateral declarations as legally equivalent to negotiated agreements [21].

Ukraine's position — that it would observe the ceasefire only so long as Russia did — is consistent with the legal principle of reciprocity in armed conflict. The steelman case for Ukraine's continued strikes is straightforward: a state defending itself against an ongoing armed attack under Article 51 of the UN Charter is not required to suspend self-defense operations because the attacker unilaterally declares a temporary pause. If the declaring party violates its own ceasefire (as both sides allege the other did), the legal basis for continued military operations remains intact [20][21].

Legal scholars have also noted that Russia's pattern of declaring short holiday ceasefires — rather than engaging in negotiated ceasefire agreements with monitoring provisions — suggests these declarations are not intended as legal instruments but as political gestures [17][21].

The Refugee Dimension

The war's human toll extends far beyond the front line. According to UNHCR data, Ukraine is the world's second-largest source of refugees, with 5.3 million Ukrainians displaced abroad as of late 2025 — trailing only Syria's 5.5 million [22]. Each failed ceasefire deepens the displacement crisis and erodes the prospect that refugees will return in the near term.

Source: UNHCR Population Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2025CSV

What Would a Durable Ceasefire Actually Require?

Conflict resolution experts have outlined specific conditions that would need to be met for a ceasefire in Ukraine to hold. The requirements go far beyond a presidential decree.

Monitoring infrastructure. RAND Corporation's guidelines for designing a ceasefire in Ukraine call for "an extensive third-party monitoring mechanism" using a combined suite of remote-sensing technologies — uncrewed aerial vehicles, aerostats, fixed ground sensors, satellites, and surface vehicles — tailored to the approximately 2,000-kilometer front line [16]. The research emphasizes that technology alone is insufficient: "boots on the ground" are needed to manage incidents, investigate violations, and prevent escalation [16].

Neutral attribution authority. Any monitoring mission must have "explicit authority to publicly report on violations, including attribution whenever possible," according to the RAND framework. A joint commission allowing representatives from both sides to address violations through direct communication channels would be required to manage minor infractions before they escalate [16].

The Coalition of the Willing framework. In January 2026, a coalition of 35 countries meeting in Paris issued a declaration proposing "robust security guarantees" for Ukraine, including a "U.S.-led ceasefire monitoring and verification mechanism" overseen by a "Special Commission" to "address breaches, attribute responsibility and determine remedies" [23]. France and the United Kingdom pledged to deploy troops to Ukraine if a ceasefire takes effect, establishing military hubs that could scale into a larger deterrent force if Russia resumed its offensive [24].

Demilitarized zones and demarcation lines. The CSIS analysis of potential ceasefire models emphasizes that geographic clarity is a precondition for enforcement — both sides must agree on where the line is before anyone can monitor whether it has been crossed [25]. The current front line is dynamic, with active fighting in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, and Ukrainian forces holding territory inside Russia's Kursk region.

Enforcement across all domains. A credible ceasefire, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "demands enforcement across land, sea, air, cyber, and space, backed by sanctions, monitoring, and sustained defense commitments to prevent exploitation of the truce" [26]. The Easter ceasefire addressed none of these dimensions.

What the Easter Ceasefire Tells Us

The collapse of the April 2026 Easter ceasefire, measured in thousands of violations within hours, is a data point in a long series. It demonstrates that declarations without mechanisms produce accusations without resolution. Both sides used the ceasefire primarily as a rhetorical tool — Russia to signal peacemaking intent to an international audience, Ukraine to demonstrate its willingness to pause if given genuine reciprocity.

The absence of the OSCE or any comparable monitoring body means that the question of who violated first — and how many times — may never be independently answered. The figures of 2,299 and 1,971 will persist in the public record as competing claims, cited by partisans on each side, unresolved by evidence.

For those working toward a genuine cessation of hostilities, the lesson is structural: a ceasefire in this war will not hold through goodwill, holiday sentiment, or unilateral declarations. It will require negotiated terms, agreed boundaries, neutral monitors with real-time verification capabilities, an attribution mechanism with consequences, and security guarantees backed by military force. Until those conditions exist, ceasefire announcements will continue to function as diplomatic theater — producing headlines, accusations, and thousands of violations counted by no one but the combatants themselves.