Ukraine, Russia say US-brokered truce holding in ravaged city

A local truce between Ukraine and Russia aimed at allowing humanitarian aid into the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky appears to be tentatively holding, hours after Russia fired missiles on a university campus in Kyiv.
Both sides said the ceasefire brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump had begun at 3am local time (0100 GMT) and was in effect through the morning.
AFP was not able to immediately verify whether there had been a decrease in fighting.
The war-ravaged city in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region has been caught in middle of the fighting since 2022, when it was seized by Russian forces at the start of their invasion.
Former residents told AFP earlier this year that those remaining in the city were starving, lacked medicine and could not easily leave.
“In connection with preparations for a humanitarian operation in the area of Oleshky, Kherson Oblast, (Russian forces) have ceased fire in the Kherson sector and introduced a ‘regime of silence’,” Russia’s defence ministry said on its Telegram channel overnight.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Marine Corps, Pavlo Drogal, told reporters that “the enemy is observing the ceasefire” as of 9am local time.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said there had been no reports of violations.
Kyiv’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said earlier on Telegram that “the sides are adhering to the agreements that we reached”.
But elsewhere, Russia continued to pummel the rest of Ukraine with air barrages.
Ballistic missiles struck a university campus in Kyiv on Monday evening, damaging a dorm and wounding 12 people, including five students and university staff, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Another strike hit the capital’s Southern Bridge -- a major transport artery -- damaging infrastructure for the Kyiv metro.
In Russia, two people were killed “as a result of explosive devices being dropped” on the western city of Bryansk, regional acting governor Yegor Kovalchuk said.