The intensity of artillery exchanges, bomb strikes, mortar strikes and ground assaults across the Russo-Ukrainian War’s 1,000-kilometer (about 620-mile) fighting line abated marginally during a three-day “ceasefire” announced by the Kremlin, but shooting and explosions seemed as violent as ever on Monday, on-the-ground reports and analysts said.
A ceasefire declared by Russia’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin to observe the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe during World War II was effectively not respected by either side, both during the three-day “ceasefire” and after it ended.
Putin in late April announced he was ordering a 72-hour ceasefire starting on May 7 and lasting until May 10, and said Kyiv should follow suit.
Battle reports from the field on Monday from multiple sectors of the front confirmed that combat, at times intense, was in progress and had not abated from levels seen last week.
A Kyiv Post reporter in the Pokrovsk sector heard explosions throughout the morning on Monday and was told by men serving in an assault unit assigned to the 67th Mechanized Brigade that the ceasefire had not visibly affected the intensity of combat in their sector. Some soldiers said they had never known Putin even announced a ceasefire.
Elsewhere in the Donbas region, reporter Maryan Kushnir filed a story with the US-financed Radio Liberty news agency with text and video content showing mortar operators from 68th Mountain Assault firing a barrage from a concealed position on May 9 and the sound of Russian artillery shell impacts and cluster munition strikes. Neither side had abated firing and attack drones were orbiting defensive positions and attacking men, equipment and fortifications, Kushnir said in that Monday report.
A 68th Brigade soldier interviewed on camera said Russian attacks and shelling during the supposed ceasefire hadn’t changed, and that Russian troops had attempted an unsuccessful assault against his unit’s positions earlier in the day.
Combat reports and drone video published by 15th National Guard Brigade “Kara-Dag” documented a Russian assault on a Ukrainian trench line in the Kupyansk sector, east of Kharkiv, on May 10. Russian infantrymen rode motorcycles in a bid to cross open ground quickly but were stopped by first-person-view (FPV) drone swarms and the guardsmen’s fire, the unit reported on Monday.
Artillery exchanges across the Dnipro River took place repeatedly on Monday, with Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergency Situations confirming and publishing images of damage caused by Russian shell strikes to civilian housing in the Ukraine-controlled riverside city Kherson. On the other side of the river officials and local media in the Russia-occupied Enerhodar reported Ukrainian forces had fired on the city with shells and artillery rockets, causing damage.
Ukrainian Air Force spokesmen on Monday morning said Russia’s long-range bombardment campaign using Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones continued effectively unabated in the hours following midnight, with air defenses detecting 108 explosives-toting aircraft during the night. Ground-based cannon and missiles and interceptor aircraft shot down 55 incoming drones, 30 drones were identified as decoys and ignored, while 23 Shaheds went on to strike targets, the report said.
Civilian homes and businesses in the regions Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Khmelnitsky, Kherson, Donetsk and Zhytomyr were targeted, the statement said. Video recorded in Odesa region showed a major fire burning in the vicinity of a rail bridge near the village Zatoka, on the Black Sea shore. Russian forces have attacked the link – thought to be a choke-point of Western military aid moving east to Ukraine – repeatedly since the full-scale invasion. Odesa social media reported drones possibly attacking the bridge and 20 explosions.
During the “ceasefire,” Russian forces launched Shahed drone swarms on Friday and Sunday, Ukrainian Air Force statements said.
Ukraine’s Army General Staff (AGS) in a Monday morning 6 a.m. sitrep confirmed high intensity fighting was continuing, and said that combat units over the past 24 hours had destroyed eight Russian tanks, 27 armored fighting vehicles, 48 artillery systems or mortars; 171 light vehicles or fuel trucks; and six special purpose vehicles. The toll of Russian soldiers “eliminated” over that same 24 hours of fighting was 1,170 men killed or injured too severely to return to combat, the AGS statement said.
Kremlin officials have said AGS kill claims are Ukrainian propaganda. AGS spokesman have said the daily reports are based largely on confirmed drone video reviewed by army analysts.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Monday blamed Ukrainian forces for “breaking the ceasefire” 14,043 times from May 9-11. Ukrainian troops made five major attacks during that time, all of which were repelled with heavy losses suffered by Kyiv’s troops, the statement claimed. The worst Ukrainian losses, per that official Kremlin claim, were suffered during failed assaults in Russia’s Kursk region (200+ men) and in the eastern Donbas sector (190+ men).
Many independent observers question the reliability of Russian Defense Ministry estimates of damage done to Ukrainian forces which, on Monday, claimed an alleged 662 Ukrainian combat aircraft and 283 Ukrainian combat helicopters claimed destroyed since February 2022 – figures implying the Russian military since the start of the war has shot down every single aircraft in the entire Ukrainian Air Force, three or four times.
The Icelandic battle data tracker Ragnar Gudmundsson on Monday published a report saying over the week May 4-11 engagements and casualties across the front were moderately lower than weekly averages for the year, but losses of land-based equipment and drone interceptions had returned to pre-“truce” levels. Shelling, though less intense than usual in some sectors, was taking place across the front, he said.
An analysis published by the independent battle data research group DeepState on Sunday found that during the 72-hour “Putin Ceasefire” Russian forces launched ground assaults an average 155 times a day, marginally fewer than recent daily averages but not dissimilar from attack intensity typical during days of cold or rainy weather in past months. Russian assaults similarly fell off by about 20% during a shorter “ceasefire” attempted on April 21, for Easter, but the next day, violence levels at the front had “returned to normal,” the group’s research found.