Russia Announces Two-Days Ceasefire in Ukraine
NEW DELHI, Apr 19: The Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday announced a temporary Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, the Kremlin said.
The announcement came on the same day as Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces pushed Ukrainian troops from one of their last remaining footholds in Russia’s Kursk region where Ukrainian troops staged a surprise incursion last year. According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire will last from 6 p.m. Moscow time (3 p.m. GMT) on Saturday to midnight (9 p.m. GMT) following Easter Sunday (April 20, 2025).
“Guided by humanitarian considerations, today from 18:00 (6 p.m.) 00:00 (12 a.m.) from Sunday to Monday, the Russian side declares an Easter truce. I order that all military actions be stopped for this period,” Mr 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,” Mr Putin said.
Mr Putin’s announcement came after the US president Donald Trump on Friday said negotiations between Ukraine and Russia were “coming to a head” and insisted that neither side was “playing” him in his push to end the war.
Mr Trump spoke shortly after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US may “move on” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there was no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts have failed to bring an end to the fighting.
In January 2023, Mr Putin had ordered his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral, 36-hour cease-fire for Orthodox Christmas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had stopped short of stating his forces would reject Mr Putin’s request, but dismissed the Russian move as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and prepare additional attacks.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday that its forces took control of the village of Oleshnya, in the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine. According to Russian state news agency Tass, Russia was still fighting to push Ukrainian forces out of the village of Gornal, some 11 kilometres 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 Russia 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.
(Manas Dasgupta)
