Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) - Russia and Ukraine launched major attacks on each other Friday, with a two-day unilateral ceasefire that Moscow had declared around its World War II commemorations appearing to be in tatters.

Ukraine never said it would abide by Moscow’s call to halt strikes and lambasted Russian leader Vladimir Putin for only wanting to pause fighting so he could stage a grand parade on Red Square on Saturday.

Kyiv said Moscow ignored a Ukrainian call to halt fighting earlier this week – a counter-proposal for a short-term ceasefire that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cast as a test of whether the Kremlin was serious about providing a brief respite in the four-year war.

Russia has threatened a massive strike on the heart of Kyiv if Ukraine disrupts the Victory Day parade on Saturday, repeatedly urging foreign diplomats to evacuate the Ukrainian capital ahead of time.

“On the Russian side, there was not even a token attempt to cease fire on the front,” Zelensky said.

“As we did over the past 24 hours, Ukraine will respond in kind today as well,” Zelensky wrote on X.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 67 drones overnight – the lowest number in almost a month.

Zelensky also reported hundreds of Russian attacks on the front line with short-range drones and attempted assaults.

Russia’s defence ministry said it had downed 264 Ukrainian drones overnight and that its troops were “responding symmetrically”.

Zelensky hailed a Ukrainian strike on an oil depot in the Yaroslavl region, around 200 kilometres (about 125 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Some 13 airports in southern Russia were closed on Friday morning due to the threat of a Ukrainian attack, aviation authorities in Russia said.

- Zelensky warning, Russian threat -

Ukraine had blasted Russia’s temporary truce as a propaganda measure to protect the victory parade on May 9 – one of the most important patriotic events for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Hours before Russia’s ceasefire began, Zelensky warned Moscow’s allies against attending the parade.

“We have also received messages from some states close to Russia, saying that their representatives plan to be in Moscow… We do not recommend it,” Zelensky said.

“They want from Ukraine a permit to hold their parade so that they can go out onto the square safely for one hour once a year, and then go on killing,” the Ukrainian leader added.

Russia has twice this week vowed a huge strike on Kyiv if the Red Square parade – where Putin will deliver a defiant address linking Soviet victory over Nazi Germany with his invasion of Ukraine – is attacked on Saturday.

“We remind the civilian population of Kyiv and staff at foreign diplomatic missions once again of the need to leave the city in good time,” Moscow’s defence ministry said in a statement Thursday evening.

Zelensky will stay in Kyiv over the weekend, a senior source close to the Ukrainian president told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The EU, Britain and Germany were among the foreign missions in the Ukrainian capital that rejected and condemned the Russian threat.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers from both sides and tens of thousands of civilians, most in Ukraine, have been killed since Putin ordered the invasion in February 2022.

Millions more have been forced from their homes in the east and south of Ukraine, which has been devastated by the fighting.

- Parade at risk -

Putin has made memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany a central narrative of his 25-year rule, staging massive parades in central Moscow on May 9 and invoking it to justify his invasion of Ukraine.

But the Kremlin is on edge due after a spate of Ukrainian long-range attacks on energy facilities in recent weeks.

Military hardware will be omitted from the parade for the first time in almost two decades and only a handful of low-key foreign guests will attend.

Moscow has also been intermittently shutting off mobile internet ahead of the celebrations.

Talks on ending what has spiralled into Europe’s worst conflict since World War II have shown little progress and have been sidelined by the Iran conflict.

Moscow is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from four regions it claims as its own – terms seen as unacceptable to Kyiv.