• Ukraine accused Russia of attacking several Ukrainian cities with over 100 combat drones and three missiles, despite a unilateral 24-hour ceasefire declared by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
  • Zelenskyy announced the truce after the Kremlin requested a ceasefire on Saturday during its annual military parade in Red Square, but said he would reciprocate if Vladimir Putin broke Ukraine’s ceasefire, which ends at midnight on Wednesday.
  • Instead of pausing operations, Moscow intensified them with a series of devastating bombings on busy urban areas. On Tuesday, 28 civilians were killed in bomb and missile strikes in the Donetsk, Poltava and Dnipro regions, and dozens were injured.
  • Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiga said the latest strikes on Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia show that Russia rejects peace and that Putin only cares about military parades, not human lives.
  • Russia’s drone and bomb attacks on Tuesday were the deadliest in Ukraine for weeks, occurring at a time when Russian advances on the battlefield have practically stopped.
  • The Kremlin has taken extensive measures to protect Saturday’s parade, including transferring air defense systems to Moscow and shutting down mobile internet, while for the first time in nearly 20 years the parade will take place without tanks and ballistic missiles.
  • Talks on ending Europe’s worst conflict since World War II have shown little progress, with Putin refusing to moderate demands first made during his 2022 full-scale invasion.

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