Fighting has resumed in Ukraine's Kherson region after a six-day truce brought quiet to the front-line area for the first time in years, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of using the pause to strengthen its positions and Russia suggesting Ukraine did the same.

The ceasefire, the longest since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, allowed hundreds of people trapped in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky and its surroundings to be evacuated. It ended on Sunday after starting on Tuesday, with neither side reporting breaches during the pause itself.

On Monday morning, local authorities confirmed that strikes had returned, saying Russia had hit a medical facility in Kherson city centre. They also said a 62-year-old woman and a 73-year-old man were injured when a Russian drone attacked the car they were travelling in.

What each side says about the pause

Ukraine's General Staff accused Russian forces of using the humanitarian window to set up positions, rotate units and deliver ammunition. It said it had recorded the rotation of Russian units, the expansion of anti-drone equipment on the roads and the delivery of ammunition.

The Kremlin appeared to corroborate the general point when its spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said it was "reasonable to assume that the Ukrainian army also used this period" for its own purposes. Neither side has published evidence that the other violated the truce while it was in force, and both describe the pause as humanitarian rather than political.

France 24 reported that the truce was brokered by the US first lady, Melania Trump, to enable a mission to the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. That detail matters: the arrangement was narrow, time-limited and tied to an evacuation, not to a wider peace process.

Why the truce mattered

The evacuation was the largest movement of civilians out of occupied territory in years, and it was covered as a rare piece of cooperation in a war that has otherwise produced only stalemates. Hundreds of people who had been trapped for years crossed back into Ukrainian-held territory, many of them malnourished and in poor health.

The pause also showed how quickly a local arrangement can collapse. Within hours of the ceasefire expiring, strikes resumed in the same region, and Ukrainian officials said the first targets included civilian infrastructure.

For the residents of Oleshky who chose to stay, the end of the truce removes the only corridor that had opened in years. For those who left, it closes the question of whether to return for now.

The wider military picture

The return of fighting in Kherson coincides with renewed strikes elsewhere in the south. Ukrainian officials said a village in Zaporizhzhia, adjacent to Kherson, was hit repeatedly hours after the truce ended, with civilians collecting humanitarian aid among the casualties.

Those strikes are being treated by Kyiv as evidence that Moscow has no interest in de-escalation, and by Moscow as part of a military campaign that it describes differently. The diplomatic space between those accounts has narrowed since the ceasefire ended.

What happens next

The immediate question is whether the Kherson front returns to its previous tempo or escalates. Ukrainian officials have said Russian units were reinforced during the pause, which would suggest the latter.

The second question is whether the model of narrow, humanitarian pauses survives this episode. If both sides believe the other used the window to reposition, future arrangements will be harder to negotiate, and the civilians who depend on them will have fewer opportunities to leave.

Melania Trump's involvement gave the truce an unusual diplomatic profile, but the mechanism was always fragile: it depended on both armies choosing not to fire for six days in one sector, not on a political agreement that would outlast the evacuation.

Neither side's account of the pause can be independently verified from the front line, and the practical effect is the same: the corridor that opened for six days is closed. Aid groups that had been preparing convoys into the area now have to negotiate new guarantees, and each negotiation takes days that civilians on the front line do not have. The episode also shows how narrow the definition of "humanitarian" has become: a pause arranged around a single evacuation, in a single sector, for a fixed number of days.

For Kyiv, the lesson is that even a truce with no reported violations can end with strikes within hours. For Moscow, the lesson is that such pauses can be presented as evidence that it is willing to let civilians out. Both readings are compatible with the facts, which is why the argument will continue long after the evacuation is over. Dashing fragile hopes of progress towards peace, as France 24 put it, is easier than building the conditions for another pause.

The truce and its ending have a direct precedent: the evacuation of Oleshky under the local truce was the largest civilian movement out of occupied territory in years, and it followed the missile attack on Kyiv that came after earlier talks, while the war's political background, including Putin's comments calling Elon Musk a genius, has not changed.