Putin declares temporary unilateral Easter truce in war against Ukraine
Kremlin says ceasefire to continue until midnight after Christian holiday; Zelensky says Russian leader trying ‘to play with human lives,’ notes Iranian attack drones still active
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a temporary Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, the Kremlin said Saturday.
According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire will last from 6 p.m. Moscow time on Saturday to midnight following Easter Sunday.
“Guided by humanitarian considerations, today from 18:00 to 00:00 from Sunday to Monday, the Russian side declares an Easter truce. I order that all military actions be stopped for this period,” 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,” Putin said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a social media post Saturday, responded skeptically to Putin, accusing him of trying to “play with human lives.”
“As for yet another attempt by Putin to play with human lives — at this moment, air raid alerts are spreading across Ukraine,” Zelensky wrote on X.
“Shahed (attack) drones in our skies reveal Putin’s true attitude toward Easter and toward human life,” the president added, referring to the Iranian unmanned aircraft, without saying whether Ukraine would observe the proposed truce.
The truce declaration came on the same day as Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces 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.
The Associated Press could not immediately verify the claim, and there was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials.
According to the Russian state news agency TASS, Russia is still fighting to push Ukrainian forces out of the village of Gornal, some 7 miles (11 kilometers) south of Oleshnya.
“The Russian military has yet to push the Ukrainian armed forces out of Gornal … in order to completely liberate the Kursk region. Fierce fighting is underway in the settlement,” the agency reported, citing Russian security agencies.
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.
In other developments, the Ukrainian air force reported that Russia fired 87 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks overnight into Saturday. It said 33 of them were intercepted and another 36 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
Russian attacks damaged farms in the Odesa region and sparked fires in the Sumy region overnight, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Saturday. Fires were contained, and no casualties were reported.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, said its air defense systems shot down two Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday.
Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine in recent weeks, extending the violence wrought by its all-out invasion that has gone on for more than three years.
Last week, a Russian missile attack in the Ukrainian city of Sumy killed 32 people and wounded nearly 100.
The strike came two days after US envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia to meet with Putin and push US President Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war.
In a sharp turn of US policy, the Trump administration has been amicable toward the Kremlin, with the president falsely blaming the Ukrainians for having started the war.
The Times of Israel Community.