For a third year in a row, Ukrainians observed their Easter Sunday as Russian troops advanced in eastern Ukraine, particularly around the strategic town of Chasiv Yar, while Kyiv's troops wait for U.S. military aid that would help them push back Russian forces.
Despite the imminent Russian threat, residents in Kostiantynivka, 15 kilometers southwest of Chasiv Yar, attended the Orthodox Easter liturgy.
"We came in 2022 and in 2023, and we'll come again," said Natalia Hryhorieva, 58, outside an Orthodox church as she waited for a priest to bless her Easter basket with holy water.
In the background, cannon fire bellowed. The priest decried the "Godless" enemy and led a prayer for Ukraine's victory.
Kostiantynivka, a key Ukrainian city in the industrialized Donetsk region, could be next in line to face a Russian onslaught if Chasiv Yar falls, analysts have said.
In an Easter message from Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Ukrainians to unite in prayer for each other and soldiers on the front line, saying God has a "Ukrainian flag on his shoulder."
"Let's pray for each other. When we all came closer to each other, we were no longer strangers to each other," he said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app.
Standing in front of the 1,000-year-old Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine has now been fighting for 802 days against Russia for a victory.
In Moscow, President Vladimir Putin attended an Easter service led by the head of Russia's Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, a staunch supporter of the Russian leader and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Eastern Orthodox Christians usually celebrate Easter later than Catholic and Protestant churches, because they use a different calendar for calculating the date of what they believe is Christ’s resurrection.
The Russian defense ministry said Sunday its forces seized the village of Ocheretyne with a prewar population of 3,000, in Donetsk. Russian troops have been pummeling Kyiv’s ammunition-depleted forces with artillery, drones and bombs.
Ukraine’s Kharkiv and Dnipro regions also were hit by Russian drones Saturday. At least six people were injured, including a 13-year-old, when the drones struck commercial and residential buildings, regional officials said.
The Ukrainian air force said it downed 23 out of 24 Shahed drones targeting the regions again Sunday, with the debris from the falling drones in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv striking civilian targets, injuring four people and causing a fire in an office building that has been brought under control, the regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said in a post on Telegram.
Ten more people were wounded in an airstrike Sunday afternoon on the Kharkiv regional capital, also called Kharkiv, Syniehubov said.
Fires broke out when debris from the drones that were shot down fell on buildings in the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. No casualties were reported.
Russian state news agency RIA reported Saturday that Russian forces targeted a drone warehouse overnight in Kharkiv that it said had been used by Ukrainian troops. The state media cited Sergei Lebedev, a self-described coordinator of local pro-Moscow guerrillas.
His comments could not be independently verified, The Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, Russia is lashing out at NATO's four-month-long military exercises, known as Steadfast Defender. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement Saturday that NATO’s exercises close to Russia’s borders are proof that the Western alliance is preparing for a potential conflict with Russia.
Zakharova dismissed NATO accusations that Russia is engaged in hybrid attacks on NATO member states, calling them misinformation aimed at distracting people from the alliance's activities.
The Kremlin also criticized as dangerous some comments by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and French President Emmanuel Macron that indicated their countries’ direct involvement in Ukraine’s war against Russia.
"This is a direct escalation of tension around the Ukrainian conflict, which could potentially pose a danger to European security, to the entire European security architecture," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday at a news briefing.
During a visit to Kyiv, Cameron told Reuters that Ukraine has the right to strike in self-defense. “Just as Russia is striking inside Ukraine, you can quite understand why Ukraine feels the need to make sure it's defending itself," he said.
In a separate interview Thursday, Macron repeated an earlier comment of his that he doesn’t exclude sending troops to Ukraine, an act that Russia said, would lead to a direct and dangerous escalation of tensions around the conflict.
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
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