Putin declares Easter ceasefire but Ukraine says Russia still firing

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a unilateral 30-hour Easter ceasefire in Ukraine today, after Washington said it could abandon peace talks within days unless the Moscow and Kyiv show they are ready to stop the war.

Putin ordered fighting to stop as of 6 p.m. Moscow time (5 a.m in Hawaii) today until midnight Sunday.

“Based on humanitarian considerations … the Russian side announces an Easter truce. I order a stop to all military activities for this period,” Putin told Valery Gerasimov, Chief of Russia’s General Staff, at a meeting televised today.

“We assume that Ukraine will follow our example. At the same time, our troops should be prepared to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations by the enemy, any aggressive actions,” Putin 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 Zelenskyy 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, Zelenskyy said in a post on X.

“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.

A couple of hours into the purported ceasefire, a Ukrainian official said Russian forces were continuing to open fire on Ukrainian positions despite Putin’s proclamation.

“The Russians are trying to pretend that they are ‘peacekeepers’, but they already refused an unconditional ceasefire on March 11 and now are conducting an information operation, talking about a ‘truce’ but continuing to shoot without stopping,” Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation, wrote on Telegram.

“This is all with the aim of blaming Ukraine,” he wrote.

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.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said on Friday the United States would walk away from efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal unless there were clear signs of progress soon.

Kirill Dmitriev, an envoy for Putin who travelled to Washington this month, posted news of the ceasefire on X, adding: “One step closer to peace” and an emoji of a dove.

Trump has vowed to bring a swift end to the war, while shifting U.S. policy from firmly supporting Kyiv toward accepting Moscow’s account of the conflict.

Last month, Ukraine accepted a proposal from Trump for a 30-day truce which Moscow rejected; the sides agreed only to limited pauses of attacks on energy targets and at sea, which both accuse the other of breaking.

Putin’s announcement comes a week after a Russian missile attack killed 35 people and wounded nearly 120 in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, including Christians heading to celebrate Palm Sunday. That attack, the deadliest against civilians of the year so far, spurred Kyiv and its European allies to press Washington to take a tougher line towars Moscow.

Putin has proclaimed unilateral pauses in fighting in the past with little impact on the battlefield, including a 36-hour proposed truce for Orthodox Christmas in January, 2023, which Kyiv rejected.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that some progress on a peace settlement had already been made but that contacts with Washington were difficult.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides, displaced millions of Ukrainian civilians and reduced frontline Ukrainian cities to rubble.

Putin has said repeatedly that he wants an end to the war, but had not retreated from his initial demands that Kyiv cede all territory he claims to have annexed and be permanently barred from joining a defence alliance with the West.

Kyiv says those terms would be tantamount to surrender and leave it undefended from future Russian attacks.

Putin told Gerasimov today that Russia welcomed efforts from the U.S., China and BRICS countries to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

Separately, Russia and Ukraine both confirmed a swap of prisoners of war today, mediated by the UAE. Each released 246 prisoners, while a further 31 wounded Ukrainians were transferred in exchange for 15 injured Russian soldiers, the Russian defence ministry said.