KYIV: As a three-day truce expired on Tuesday, Russia and Ukraine resumed strikes, with Ukrainian authorities saying that the attack on Kyiv with drones killed one person in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk.

The Russian military, meanwhile, said it had shot down 27 Ukrainian drones after the ceasefire expired.

US President Donald Trump had announced the truce on Friday, hours before Russia’s World War II victory celebrations, saying he hoped it would mark “the beginning of the end” of the four-year-old conflict.

But even before it expired, the two countries had traded accusations of attacks on civilians that violated the truce.

Kremlin says too early to talk about ‘specifics’ after Putin says war ‘heading to an end’

In a Telegram post, head of the Ukrainian capital military administration Tymur Tkachenko said, “Enemy UAVs are currently over Kyiv. Please stay safe until the alert is cleared.”

The military administration told residents to remain in shelters as its air defences could be operating in the area. Russian strikes in eastern Ukraine killed one person and wounded at least four others, regional military authorities said.

The strikes killed a man and wounded a woman in the area of Synelnykove in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the head of the regional military administration Oleksandr Ganzha said, adding that three others were wounded in strikes elsewhere in Dnipropetrovsk.

On the Russian side, “air defence duty assets intercepted and destroyed 27 Ukrainian fixed-wing UAVs” over the Belgorod, Voronezh and Rostov regions, Russia’s defence ministry said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said fighting with Russia was ongoing despite the truce. “Today, there was no silence at the front, there was fighting. We have recorded all of this,” he said in the final hours of the truce.

It was “clear that the war in Iran is now drawing the most attention from America”, Zelensky added.

The Kremlin said it was too early to talk about “specifics” of ending the war in Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the conflict was “heading to an end”.

Putin surprised many by suggesting the war was “coming to an end”, during a speech on Saturday after the World War II victory parade on Red Square. But he did not elaborate on what he meant and the comments were paired with criticism of Western support for Ukraine’s army.

“The president said that Russia remains open to contact and that work has been done in a trilateral format.

“He said that we would welcome continued follow-up efforts from the United States,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday when asked about Putin’s remarks.

“The accumulated groundwork in terms of the peace process allows us to say that the end is drawing near. But in this context, it is not possible at the moment to speak about any specifics,” Peskov said.

“You know that the humanitarian ceasefire has ended and the special military operation is ongoing. It could be stopped at any moment,” Peskov said, as soon as Ukraine “assumes responsibility and makes the necessary decision”.

“Kyiv is well aware of the decisions that need to be made,” he remarked.

Russia has repeatedly urged Ukraine pull out of areas in the eastern Donbas region it still controls as a prerequisite of any peace deal. Kyiv has rejected the demand.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2026