Putin announces an Easter truce in Ukraine from today until Sunday
The Russian president expressed confidence that Kiev would respect the ceasefire.
BarcelonaThey asked for a 30-day truce, and Vladimir Putin has granted them 30 hours. The Russian president announced a ceasefire this Saturday for the Orthodox Easter holiday, which began this evening at six o'clock (five o'clock in Catalonia) and will last until midnight on Sunday. It is a further step in the Kremlin's negotiating strategy, who is trying to please Donald Trump after he warned that if there was no progress in peace negotiations in Ukraine "within days," The United States could abandon mediation efforts.
Putin announced this after meeting with the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerassimov, and expressed confidence that Ukraine would join the truce, the Kremlin reported on its Telegram channel.
"Guided by humanitarian considerations, today from 6 p.m. until midnight on Sunday into Monday, the Russian side declares an Easter truce. I order that all military operations be halted during this period. We proceed from the principle that the Ukrainian side will follow our example," the president said.
The Defense Ministry announced that Gerassimov "has ordered all commanders of the special military operations zone [the Kremlin's euphemism for the invasion of Ukraine] to establish a ceasefire regime for humanitarian purposes, which will be reciprocally observed by the Kiev regime," the Kremlin said.
Volodymyr Zelensky avoided taking a position on the truce, but criticized the fact that at 5:15 p.m., three-quarters of an hour before it was due to come into effect, he had to activate an air raid siren due to a Russian drone attack. "The Shahed [drones] in our skies are Putin's true attitude towards Easter and people's lives," the Ukrainian president wrote.
The Russian president's move comes the day after Moscow ended the 30-day moratorium on energy infrastructure attacks, which Putin unilaterally declared on March 18. In recent weeks, the Kremlin has daily accused Ukraine of violating the truce, despite independent analysts finding no evidence of any of the strikes reported by the Russian Defense Ministry.
The Russian Orthodox Church has welcomed the initiative, arguing that "holiday truces are an ancient Christian custom." Patriarch Kirill previously proposed a ceasefire in January 2023, coinciding with Orthodox Christmas. On that occasion, Putin also unilaterally joined, but Zelensky refused, calling it a "cynical" maneuver.
This Saturday, Russia and Ukraine also carried out a prisoner exchange. The Russian army has handed over 277 Ukrainian soldiers, 31 of them wounded, while the Ukrainian army has released 261 Russian soldiers, 15 of them wounded.
