• Moscow claims retaking over 99pc of Kursk region
• Kremlin and Kyiv return 240 POWs in swap

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a unilateral 30-hour Easter ceasefire in Ukraine on Saturday, 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 6pm Moscow time on Saturday until midnight on Sunday night.

“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 on Saturday.

“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 Zelenskiy 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, Zelenskiy 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.

Putin “might do it to give some hope or to show his humanity. But either way, of course, we don’t trust (Russia),” said Dmitry, a 40-year-old soldier. “These 30 hours will lead to nothing, I don’t see any result. The killings of our people and theirs will 100pc continue,” he added.

Moscow reclaims Kursk region

Moscow’s troops have driven out Ukrainian forces from nearly all of Russia’s western Kursk region, Russia’s military chief Valery Gerasimov said on Saturday.

“The bulk of the area where the invasion took place has now been cleared,” Gerasimov told President Vladimir Putin in a televised meeting. “It’s 1,260 square km, 99.5pc.” Russia has been trying to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk since August last year after Kyiv’s troops mounted a surprise incursion that embarrassed Putin and which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hoped would give him a bargaining chip in any future talks to end the war.

Gerasimov updated Putin on the battlefield developments, which Reuters could not independently verify, shortly before the Kremlin chief announced a unilateral Easter ceasefire in Ukraine. Gerasimov said Ukraine was holding onto just 3 square km of Kursk around the villages of Oleshnya and Gornal, which lie just on the border.

Russia earlier Saturday said it had retaken the penultimate village still under Ukrainian control in its Kursk frontier region.

Prisoner swap

Ukraine and Russia said they had each returned 246 soldiers being held as prisoners of war in a swap. Zelensky said the total of returned POWs now stood at 4,552.

Kyiv had hoped to use its hold on the region as a bargaining chip in the talks. The Russian POWs are in Belarus, the ministry said, where they were being provided with medical and psychological care.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2025