A rare lull along one slice of Ukraine’s front line was due to expire this evening, with a Kherson-only truce set to lapse after neither Moscow nor Kyiv signalled plans to extend it.
The pause in hostilities, which took hold early Tuesday, opened a window for a humanitarian mission to reach the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, even as the wider war drags through its fifth year.
After the ceasefire began, neither side reported any breaches — a quiet that one Ukrainian MP called the “biggest de-escalation since 2022”.
Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 ignited a conflict that has ravaged swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and driven millions from their homes.
But with the truce nearing its end, a Ukrainian military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned that combat could return “worse than before”.
The officer said Russian troops on the opposite bank of the Dnipro river used the past few days’ calm to bring in fresh forces, move ammunition supplies, and probe Ukrainian positions with surveillance drones to gather intelligence.
Fighting has continued elsewhere in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s energy ministry said new power outages had struck areas across the country — including Kyiv — after Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
In the Russian-occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine, Russian-installed authorities said Ukrainian strikes had killed four people since yesterday evening.
Russia reported this morning that a drone hit an “industrial enterprise” east of Moscow overnight.
Ukrainian media said Kyiv targeted the Kstovo oil refinery, describing it as “one of Russia’s largest oil refineries, producing fuel and lubricants”.
Ukraine has repeatedly hit Russian oil and gas facilities, arguing the strikes are legitimate retaliation for Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
US President Donald Trump has been urging Ukraine to halt such operations, blaming them for higher diesel prices that analysts link to the Iran war.
Russia, which denies targeting civilians, currently controls roughly a fifth of Ukraine: Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, most of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions — known collectively as the Donbas — and significant parts of the southern Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Talks mediated by the United States between Russia and Ukraine are expected to restart this month after being largely frozen since the United States and Israel carried out joint strikes on Iran in February.
