Putin declares 30-hour Easter ceasefire in Ukraine

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his army to suspend combat operations in Ukraine over the Easter holiday this weekend.

Putin declared a unilateral 30-hour “Easter ceasefire” for “humanitarian reasons” on Saturday in a meeting with Valery Gerasimov, his top military officer, according to footage published by the Kremlin. The truce was set to take effect at 6pm. Moscow time on Saturday and end at midnight on Sunday.

The halt, which comes a day after US President Donald Trump threatened to end peacemaking efforts in Ukraine if quick progress was not made, was the second time Putin has declared a full suspension of hostilities since ordering the invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Putin announced a similar truce to mark the Orthodox Christmas in January 2023, which Ukraine claimed was a ploy to stop its advances against Russian forces.

Minutes after Putin’s announcement, air raid alerts were announced in several regions across Ukraine as well as in the capital Kyiv, where air defences opened fire on incoming missiles and drones, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian air force.

“As for yet another attempt by Putin to play with human lives — at this moment, air raid alerts are spreading across Ukraine. At 17:15, Russian attack drones were detected in our skies” Zelenskyy said, following a report from Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

He added: “Shahed drones in our skies reveal Putin’s true attitude towards Easter and towards human life.”

While Kyiv has agreed to Trump’s proposal of a 30-day ceasefire, Putin has refused to back away from his maximalist demands for ending the war.

“Putin has now made statements about his alleged readiness for a ceasefire. 30 hours instead of 30 days,” foreign minister Andriy Sybiha said on Saturday after Putin’s announcement. “Unfortunately, we have had a long history of his statements not matching his actions. We know his words cannot be trusted and we will look at actions, not words.”

“We want to see Russian forces actually cease fire in all directions,” he said, while also urging Ukraine’s partners and the international community “to be vigilant”.

Both sides have accused each other of repeatedly violating a moratorium on energy strikes brokered by the US in March. Russia also said it would not sign up to a similar agreement on maritime security in the Black Sea unless a number of western sanctions were repealed.

Putin said Russia expected Ukraine to “follow our example” but told Gerasimov he wanted his forces to be “prepared to repel any ceasefire violations, provocations and aggressive actions by the enemy”.

He thanked Trump, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Brics nations for their efforts to find a settlement to the war in Ukraine and said the ceasefire would show whether Kyiv was serious about “participating in peace negotiations aimed at resolving the initial reasons for the Ukrainian crisis”.

Putin’s stated conditions for ending the war include Ukraine surrendering four partially occupied southeastern regions to Russia and, in effect, ceasing to exist as an independent state.

Russia has also demanded that Nato roll back almost all of its deployments east of the Berlin Wall as part of a deal, which would rewrite the post-Cold War security order.

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy said that Ukrainian forces continued their fight to hold on to a shrinking swatch of land inside Russia’s Kursk region. Citing a report from Syrsky, the president said that Kyiv’s troops had also “advanced and expanded our zone of control” in the neighbouring Russian region of Belgorod.

Shortly before Putin’s ceasefire announcement, Russia and Ukraine carried out one of the largest exchanges of prisoners of war since the start of Moscow’s all-out invasion in February 2022. Zelenskyy said that 277 Ukrainian troops had been returned following a deal brokered by the United Arab Emirates.

He added that 4,552 Ukrainian soldiers had been freed from Russian captivity since the start of the invasion.