Since Cease-Fire Talks Began, Life in Ukraine Has Become More Dangerous, U.N. Says

New York Times

02-05-2025

With the beginning of cease-fire talks in the war between Russia and Ukraine, life has become riskier for Ukrainian civilians, according to a tally of civilian deaths by the United Nations and analysts reviewing recent Russian strikes.
Since the talks began in February, Russian missile and drone strikes and fighting along the front line have killed far more civilians than over the same period a year ago, U.N. officials said in a presentation for diplomats in New York this week. In the first 24 days of April, for example, 848 civilians were killed or wounded, a 46 percent increase over the same period last year, the U.N. said.
At the same time, Russia has been targeting cities more intensively — just last month hitting a playground, pedestrians on a crowded sidewalk and an apartment building — an analysis of recent strikes show. In the fighting on the ground, Russia opened a new offensive in the north, east and south, Ukraine's top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said on April 9.
On March 11, Ukraine launched on Moscow its largest drone assault of the entire war — the morning of the day it agreed to a cease-fire. The barrage killed three people and wounded 18 others in the Russian capital and nearby, the Russian authorities said.
Overall, the first months of this year coinciding with the Trump administration's peace talks have clocked in as far deadlier than the same period last year, according to the United Nations.
Analysts say an increase in violence during cease-fire talks is not unusual in wars. When talks are underway in conflicts, they say, warring armies tend to jockey for advantage before a truce halts the fighting. The result can be more casualties, particularly in Ukraine as flurries of strikes overwhelm air defenses.
'If there is going to be a moment when they cannot pursue military action, you expect armies to get in whatever blows they want before they have to stop,' Samuel Charap, a Russia analyst at the Rand Corporation, said in a phone interview. 'I don't think an increase in attacks necessarily means rejection of the negotiating process.'
In 2014 and 2015, Russia escalated military action sharply in Ukraine before or during cease-fire talks, capturing the eastern towns of Ilovaisk and Debaltseve to force political terms on Kyiv. 'There are things militaries want to achieve before a potential cessation of hostilities,' Mr. Charap said.
The new run of attacks has put Ukrainians on edge. Olena Khirkovska, 57, an accountant whose apartment was destroyed in a Russian missile strike in Kyiv on April 24, said the strikes seemed intended to frighten Ukrainians into accepting an unfavorable deal.
'We are strong, fear us,' was the message of the attacks, she said, adding, 'It feels like they don't want peace at all' while engaging in negotiations.
President Trump began the cease-fire talks on Feb. 12 with phone calls to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Since then, the Trump administration has pursued separate rounds of negotiations with Ukrainian and Russian officials.
During talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on March 11, Ukraine agreed to the U.S. proposal for an unconditional, 30-day cease-fire. Later in March, Russia and Ukraine agreed to a limited truce covering strikes on energy infrastructure, but each accused the other of violating that.
Russia offered a 30-hour cease-fire on Easter Sunday, and Ukraine accepted. Again, each side accused the other of violations but acknowledged that violence declined during the truce.
Mr. Putin has proposed a three-day cease-fire next week for the 50th anniversary of the end World War II.
Vice President JD Vance in an interview on Thursday with Fox News suggested a drawn-out timeline for talks stretching into the summer. The war, Mr. Vance said, would not end 'any time soon.' Russia and Ukraine, he said, had laid out their terms for a settlement. 'We're going to work very hard over the next 100 days to try to bring these guys together,' Mr. Vance said.
The pace of Russian missile and drone attacks rose after Mr. Trump's phone call in February with the two leaders, an analysis of Ukrainian air force reports shows. In the 30 days that followed the calls, Russia launched 4,694 missiles and drones at Ukraine, compared with 1,873 in the 30 days before the calls.
After the bombardment of Kyiv that pancaked an apartment building, Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post of Mr. Putin, 'it makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war.'
It is not clear that the increase in attacks is linked to the talks. Russia has for months been ramping up exploding drone assaults after a factory producing the most common model, an Iranian-designed drone 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's a reflection primarily of availability,' he said. 'They fire everything they have.'
But there was a change in Russian tactics, analysts said. Rather than striking multiple targets throughout Ukraine, it has focused many nights on one intensive bombardment of a single city or town.
That tactic overwhelms Ukrainian air defenses and 'results in much greater destruction and human casualties,' said Oleksiy Melnyk, a military analyst at the Razumkov Center, a research organization, in Kyiv. The goal, he said, is to stir opposition to the war in Ukraine and raise 'pressure on the Ukrainian government' to accept settlement terms.
The U.N. documented more than 2,641 civilians killed or wounded in the first three months of this year, Joyce Msuya, the U.N. assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, told diplomats at the United Nations on Tuesday. That was nearly 900 additional dead and wounded civilians in Ukraine compared with the same period last year, she said.
The rate of civilian deaths rose further in April, coinciding with a period when U.S. negotiators met separately with Ukrainian and Russian officials for talks.
The attacks this year have also driven about 40,000 Ukrainians from their homes, adding to the war's total of 10.7 million people displaced within the country.
The attacks in April included a strike that killed 35 people, many out strolling on sidewalks on Palm Sunday in the northeastern city of Sumy, and another that killed 19, including nine children, when a missile hit a playground in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
An official in Russia's occupation government on Thursday accused Ukraine of hitting a market in a Russian-controlled area of Ukraine, killing seven people and wounding 20 others. Ukraine's military denied the claim, which was not possible to independently verify.
The barrages continued overnight Friday. Ukrainian authorities said that Russia launched 150 drones overnight, and that most had been shot down. A drone volley Thursday wounded 14 people in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, the regional governor said. On Wednesday, a volley of drones wounded 45 people, including two children and a pregnant woman, in Kharkiv, the local authorities said.
'And so it goes every day,' Mr. Zelensky wrote on Facebook about the attacks. He asked for nations supporting Ukraine to impose additional sanctions on Russia. 'It must be pressure, not just words or persuasion, that forces Russia to cease fire,' he said.