Longest Ceasefire of Ukraine War Ends as Fighting Returns to Kherson Region

Fighting has returned to the Kherson region of southern Ukraine after the collapse of a six-day ceasefire, the longest halt in hostilities since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. The resumption of combat in the region on the lower reaches of the Dnipro River ended an unprecedented pause in a war that has entered its fifth year.

The truce had held for six days, a duration unmatched by any previous pause in the conflict since it began with the invasion launched on February 24, 2022. Reports of renewed fighting emerged from the Kherson region shortly after the ceasefire lapsed, returning the area to the exchanges of fire that have defined this stretch of the front line for years.

Kherson occupies a singular place in the history of the war. The city of Kherson, the administrative center of the region, was the only regional capital that Russian forces captured after launching their invasion. Russian troops took the city in the opening days of the war, and Ukrainian forces recaptured it in November 2022 during a counteroffensive in the south, one of Kyiv's most significant battlefield successes of the conflict.

Since the Ukrainian recapture of the city, the front line in the region has largely followed the Dnipro River. Ukrainian forces hold the city of Kherson and surrounding areas on the west bank, while Russian forces are positioned on the opposite bank. Both sides have carried out regular shelling, drone strikes and artillery attacks across the river throughout the war, and civilian areas on the Ukrainian-held side have repeatedly come under fire.

The six-day truce had briefly interrupted those exchanges before hostilities resumed. No other stoppage of the fighting recorded at any point in the war had lasted as long.

The BBC, which reported the return of fighting in the region, noted that the truce, though unprecedented, "has done little to alter the wider trajectory" of the war. Combat has continued along front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine, with heavy fighting concentrated for years in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, parts of which had been controlled by Russia-backed forces since 2014.

Earlier pauses in the war were far shorter. Temporary truces declared during the conflict, including those announced around religious holidays, lasted only hours or days, and both Kyiv and Moscow repeatedly accused each other of violations during those shorter halts. No previous stoppage of the fighting had approached the six-day duration of the ceasefire that has now ended.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have continued since the invasion began, with repeated international initiatives aimed at securing a ceasefire or a negotiated settlement. None of those efforts had previously produced a pause in the fighting lasting as long as six days.

The Kherson region borders the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and includes the mouth of the Dnipro River where it flows into the Black Sea. Russian control of most of the region after the 2022 invasion had linked Russian-held territory in southern Ukraine to Crimea by land, until Ukrainian forces pushed Russian troops back across the river in the autumn of that year.

The full-scale war has driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes, devastated cities and towns across the country's east and south, and become the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

Details of the renewed fighting in the Kherson region, including the exact locations of the clashes and any casualties, were not specified in the initial reports.