Putin declares a 30-hour Easter ceasefire in Ukraine

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the troops to halt combat operations in Ukraine this weekend on Easter holiday.

According to footage published by the Kremlin, Putin declared a one-sided 30-hour “Easter ceasefire” on Saturday in a meeting with his best military man Valerie Gerasimov, on Saturday for “humanitarian reasons.” Ceasefire It was Set it to be enabled at 6pm. Moscow hours end in the middle of the night on Saturday and Sunday.

The halt was the second time Putin has declared a complete halt of hostilities since he ordered an invasion of Ukraine three years ago, when President Donald Trump threatened to end peace-building efforts in Ukraine if rapid progress was not made.

Putin announced a similar ceasefire in January 2023 marking Orthodox Christmas. Ukraine claimed it was a ploy to stop progress against the Russian army.

Minutes after Putin’s announcement, it was announced in several regions across Ukraine and in Kiev, where the air force fired 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 life – at this point, air raid alerts are spreading throughout Ukraine. At 17:15, Russian attack drones were detected in our sky,” Zelenki said following a report from Oleksandr Silsky, commander of Ukrainian military forces.

He added:

Kiev agreed to Trump’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, but Putin refused to leave his maximalist demands to end the war.

“President Putin has now issued a statement about his suspicions that he is ready for a ceasefire. 30 hours, not 30 days,” Foreign Minister Andri Sibiha said on Saturday after Putin’s announcement. “Unfortunately, we have a long history of his statements that do not match his actions. His words are unreliable and we look at our actions rather than words.”

“The Russian army wants to see it actually turn the fire in all directions,” he said, urging its Ukrainian partners and the international community to “be on alert.”

Both sides accused each other of repeatedly violating a moratorium on a US-mediated energy strike in March. Russia also said it would not register in a similar agreement on maritime security in the Black Sea unless many Western sanctions are abolished.

Putin had hoped Russia would “follow our example,” but told Jerasimov that his forces were “ready to fight back against enemy ceasefire violations, provocations and aggressive actions.”

He thanked Trump, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Brick countries for their efforts to find a reconciliation to the war in Ukraine, saying that the ceasefire would be serious about “participating in peace negotiations aimed at solving the original reasons for the Ukrainian crisis.”

The conditions put forward by Putin to end the war are that Ukraine will surrender four partially occupied southeastern regions to Russia, effectively cease to exist as an independent state.

Russia also requested that NATO roll back almost all developments east of the Berlin Wall as part of the deal.

Meanwhile, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces continued their fight to protect the shrinking lands within Russia’s Kursk region. Citing a report from Silsky, the president said Kiev’s troops “advanced and expanded our control zone” in the Belgorod region of Russia.

Shortly before Putin’s ceasefire announcement, Russia and Ukraine carried out one of the biggest exchanges of prisoners of war since the start of the full Moscow in February 2022. Zelensky said 277 Ukrainian troops were returned following a deal brokered by the integrated Arab Emirates.

He added that 4,552 Ukrainian soldiers had been released from Russian prisoners since the invasion began.