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Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine had agreed a three-day ceasefire and prisoner swap in a deal he described as “hopefully” the “beginning of the end of a very long, deadly and hard-fought war”.
The US president wrote on Truth Social on Friday that the three-day “suspension of all kinetic activity” would take place from Saturday, May 9, through Monday, May 11, to coincide with the Victory Day celebrations in Russia. Trump also said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners from each country.
Trump said he “directly” requested the suspension of hostilities, and that it had been agreed to by Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought war,” Trump said, adding that talks to permanently end the conflict were “continuing”.
“We are getting closer and closer every day,” he said.
Zelenskyy confirmed the agreement in a social media post, saying Ukraine was “consistently working to bring its people home from Russian captivity” and he had instructed his team to “promptly prepare” for the prisoner swap.
Zelenskyy thanked the Trump administration for what he called “productive diplomatic involvement”.
The agreement comes on the eve of Victory Day, a holiday that commemorates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. Russia marks the day with a military parade on Moscow’s Red Square.
But the Kremlin had scaled back plans for this year’s event in the face of Ukraine’s growing drone and long-range strike capabilities. The parade on Saturday was expected to be the first since 2008 without columns of armoured vehicles and ballistic missiles trundling past Putin.
Only a handful of foreign leaders, including Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, planned to attend the televised event.
The three-day ceasefire and prisoner swap will be celebrated by Trump and his allies in Washington as a step towards ending a bloody war that has dragged on for more than four years. Trump claimed he would end the war “in one day”.
But his announcement on Friday came at a time of widespread scepticism that Putin is willing to end his war on Ukraine.
Earlier on Friday, EU officials said the Kremlin was “pretending” to show interest in ending the war.
“We need to get Russia from a position where Russia pretends to negotiate to where they need to actually negotiate,” said a spokesperson for the European Commission.
“We fully support the US-led peace efforts . . . [But] what have we seen? We have seen that Moscow has not changed its goals nor its actions,” the spokesperson added.
Speaking at an event on Thursday in Florence, European Council president António Costa said he believed there was “potential” for the EU to negotiate with Putin if US-led talks stalled further.
Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio conceded on Friday that talks had “stalled”, telling reporters in Rome that US efforts to mediate had “not led to a fruitful outcome”. The Trump administration did not “want to waste our time and invest time and energy into an effort that’s not moving forward”, he said.
“While we’re prepared to play whatever role we can to bring it to a peaceful diplomatic resolution, unfortunately, right now those efforts have stagnated,” Rubio said. “But we always stand ready if those circumstances change.”
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