With the beginning of ceasefires in the war between Russia and Ukraine, life has become more risky for Ukrainian citizens, according to a number of civilian lists by the United Nations and analysts who assess recent Russian strikes.
Since the conversations started in February, Russian rocket and drone attacks and battles along the front line have killed many more citizens than in the same period a year ago, said the UN officials in A presentation For diplomats in New York this week. In the first 24 days of April, for example, 848 civilians were killed or injured, an increase of 46 percent compared to the same period last year, the UN said.
At the same time, Russia has focused more intensively on cities – just last month a playground, pedestrians on a busy sidewalk and an apartment building – an analysis of recent strikes. In the fighting on the ground, Russia opened a new offensive in the north, east and south, the best military commander of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrsky, said on April 9.
On March 11, Ukraine launched the largest drone attack of the entire war on Moscow that it agreed with a ceasefire. The barrage killed three people and injured 18 others in the Russian capital and nearby, the Russian authorities said.
In general, the first months of this year are coinciding with the peace talks of the Trump administration as far as possible as possible than the same period last year, according to the United Nations.
Analysts say that an increase in violence during cease-fire conversations is not unusual in wars. When conversations are underway in conflicts, they say that warring armies tend to take advantage of jockey before a truce stops the fighting. The result can be more victims, especially in Ukraine as flurries of strikes overwhelming air defenses.
“If there will be a time when they cannot take military action, you expect armies to get in all the strokes they want before they have to stop,” said Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst at the Rand Corporation, in a telephone interview. “I don’t think an increase in attacks necessarily means the rejection of the negotiation process.”
In 2014 and 2015, Russia escalated the military action sharply in Ukraine before or during cease-fire, conquering the eastern cities of Ilovaisk and Debalseve to force political conditions on Kiev. “There are things that soldiers want to achieve before a possible stopping of hostilities,” said Mr. Charap.
The new series of attacks has set Ukrainians on sharply. Olena Khirkovska, 57, an accountant whose apartment was destroyed on 24 April in a Russian rocket attack in Kiev, said that the strikes seemed to be afraid to accept Ukrainians to accept an unfavorable deal.
“We are strong, fear us,” was the message of the attacks, she said, adding to it, “It feels like they don’t want peace at all” while they are busy negotiations.
President Trump started on 12 February with the discussions with ceasefires with phone calls to President Vladimir V. Putin van Russia and President Volodymyr Zensky van Ukraine. Since then, the Trump government has pursued individual negotiation rounds with Ukrainian and Russian officials.
During conversations in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine agreed to the American proposal for an unconditional, 30-day ceasefire on 11 March. Later in March, Russia and Ukraine came in with a limited ceasefire that covered energy infrastructure, but each accused the other of the violation of that.
On Easter Sunday, Russia offered a strike-fire-fires of 30 hours and Ukraine accepted. Again, each party accused the other violations, but acknowledged that violence during the truce decreased.
Next week, Mr Putin presented a three-day ceasefire for the 50th anniversary of the end of the World War II.
Vice-president JD Vance in an interview on Thursday with Fox News suggested a long-term timeline for conversations that extend until the summer. The war, Mr. Vance said, would not end ‘quickly’. Russia and Ukraine, he said, had established their conditions for an arrangement. “We are going to work very hard for the next 100 days to try to bring these guys together,” said Mr. Vance.
The pace of Russian rocket and drone attacks rose after Mr Trump’s phone call in February with the two leaders, according to an analysis of the Ukrainian Air Force. In the 30 days that the calls followed, Russia launched 4,694 missiles and drones in Ukraine, compared to 1,873 in the 30 days before the calls.
After the bombing of KYIV that pan’s cabinet, Mr Trump wrote in a social media post of Mr Putin: “It makes me think he might not want to stop the war.”
It is not clear that the increase in attacks is linked to the conversations. Russia has been running out of exploding drone attacks for months after a factory that produced the most common model, a drone designed by Iran called a Shahed, came online last year, said Mark F. Cancian, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “That is a reflection, mainly of availability,” he said. “They fire everything they have.”
But there was a change in Russian tactics, analysts said. Instead of making several goals in Ukraine, it has many nights aimed at one intensive bombing of a single city or city.
That tactic overwhelms Ukrainian air defenses and “results in much greater destruction and human victims,” says Oleksiy Melnyk, a military analyst at the Razumkov Center, a research organization, in Kiev. The goal, he said, is to generate opposition against the war in Ukraine and to increase the “pressure on the Ukrainian government” to accept settlement conditions.
The UN documented more than 2,641 citizens killed or injured in the first three months of this year, told Joyce Msuya, the UN assistant -Secretary -General for Humanitarian Affairs, to diplomats in the United Nations on Tuesday. That was almost 900 extra dead and wounded citizens in Ukraine compared to the same period last year, she said.
The rate of the civil deaths rose further in April and coincided with a period in which American negotiators gathered separately with Ukrainian and Russian officials for conversations.
The attacks this year also driven around 40,000 Ukrainians from their homes, which contributes to the total of 10.7 million people who are displaced in the country.
The attacks in April include a strike in which 35 people were killed, many who ran on the sidewalk on Palm Sunday in the northeastern city of Sumy, and another who killed 19, including nine children, when a rocket hit a playground in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
An official in the Russian occupation government accused Ukraine of hitting a market in a Russian controlled area of Ukraine, in which seven people are killed and 20 others injured. The army of Ukraine denied the claim, which was not possible to verify independently.
The spurages continued on Friday at night. Ukrainian authorities said Russia launched 150 drones at night and that most of them had been shot. A drone volley on Thursday injured 14 people in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, the regional governor said. On Wednesday, a volley of drones injured 45 people, including two children and a pregnant woman, in Kharkiv, the local authorities said.
“And that’s how things go every day,” Mr. Zelensky wrote about the attacks on Facebook. He asked for countries that support Ukraine to impose additional sanctions on Russia. “It must be busy, not just words or conviction that forces Russia to stop fire,” he said.
Yurii shyvalaSofia Diadchenko and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed reporting.