Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a unilateral 30-hour Easter ceasefire in Ukraine.
Mr Putin ordered his forces to temporarily pause fighting from 4pm on Saturday to 10pm on Easter Sunday, both UK time, the Kremlin announced on Saturday, after Washington said it could abandon peace talks within days unless Moscow and Kyiv show they are ready to stop the war.
“Guided by humanitarian considerations, today from 6pm to midnight from Sunday to Monday, the Russian side declares an Easter truce. I order that all military actions be stopped for this period,” Mr Putin said at a meeting with chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov, the Kremlin’s press service quoted him as saying.
“We assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions,” he added.
But shortly after the announcement, around an hour before it was due to take effect, air-raid sirens rang out in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the proposal as “yet another attempt by Putin to play with human lives”. As of 45 minutes before the truce was meant to start, Ukrainian planes were repelling Russian air strikes, he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Shahed drones in our skies reveal Putin’s true attitude toward Easter and toward human life,” he said, referring to Iranian-made attack drones used widely by Russia in the war to attack Ukrainian cities far from the front.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said on X that Mr Putin “cannot be trusted” over his declaration of a truce. He added that Kyiv stood by its original agreement to abide by the 30-day ceasefire proposed by the US during talks held in Saudi Arabia in March.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its troops had been instructed about the ceasefire and would adhere to it, provided it was “mutually respected” by Ukraine.
The announcement came after US President Donald Trump doubled down on Washington’s threats the US would abandon peace talks unless there were clear signs of progress soon.
On Friday, Mr Trump said negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are “coming to a head” and insisted that neither side is “playing” him in his push to end the grinding three-year war.
He spoke shortly after secretary of state Marco Rubio warned that the US may “move on” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there is no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts have failed to bring an end to the fighting.
With the declaration of the 30-hour truce came the announcement from Russia and Ukraine that they had swapped hundreds of prisoners on Saturday in the largest exchange since the Russian full-scale invasion started over three years ago.
Russia’s ministry of defence said that 246 Russian service members were returned from territory controlled by Kyiv and that, “as a gesture of goodwill”, 31 wounded Ukrainian prisoners of war were transferred in exchange for 15 wounded Russian soldiers in need of urgent medical care.
Mr Zelensky said that 277 Ukrainian “warriors have returned home from Russian captivity”.
Earlier, Russia’s defence ministry said its soldiers had pushed Ukrainian forces from one of their last remaining footholds in Russia’s Kursk region.
Russian forces took control of the village of Oleshnya on the border with Ukraine, the ministry said, although the claim could not be immediately verified.
Russian and North Korean soldiers have nearly deprived Kyiv of a key bargaining chip by retaking most of the region, where Ukrainian troops staged a surprise incursion last year.
Source: independent.co.uk
