KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Yesterday the presidents of Ukraine and Russia said the ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels was mostly holding, but the truce still appeared fragile in its first full day as both sides of the conflict claimed violations.

A statement from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed steps “for giving the ceasefire a stable character” in a telephone conversation.

But, it said, both leaders assessed the ceasefire as having been “fulfilled as a whole”. A separate Kremlin statement about the call said “There was a mutual satisfaction with the fact that the sides of the conflict were overall observing the ceasefire regime.”

Colonel Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s national security council, told reporters that rebels had fired at Ukrainian forces on 10 occasions Friday night after the ceasefire was to take effect.

In Donetsk, the largest city controlled by the Russian-backed separatists, the night passed quietly — a rarity after several months of daily shelling in residential areas. But Alexander Zakharchenko, the top separatist leader from Donetsk, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the ceasefire had been violated with two rounds of shelling in the town of Amvrosiivka, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of Donetsk.

“At this time the ceasefire agreement is not being fully observed,” he said. He didn’t say when the supposed breach was to have occurred.

Lysenko said Ukrainian forces were strictly observing the ceasefire and suggested that Zakharchenko’s claim was a provocation.

Earlier yesterday, the mayor’s office in Donetsk said there had been no reports of shooting or shelling there although some shelling had been heard late Friday afternoon. The city council of the second-largest rebel-held city of Luhansk, which had endured intense fighting for weeks, also reported the night was quiet.

Along the coast of the Sea of Azov, where rebels allegedly backed by Russian troops opened a new front two weeks ago, Government and separatist forces were keeping a distance of about 20 kilometres (12 miles) between them, according to an AP reporter. The remains of a Ukrainian tank smashed by rocket fire lay along the road, evidence of the fighting that raged until just before the ceasefire.