People take shelter in an underpass after an alert about a drone attack in Kyiv on Saturday. PHOTO: ANIA TSOUKANOVA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. The Russian leader called for a 30-hour halt to military attacks in Ukraine if Kyiv also agrees, but Ukraine says Russia carried on attacks after Putin declared Easter cease-fire
Ukraine said it would abide by a 30-hour cease-fire proposed by Russia if Moscow’s forces stopped shooting, saying attacks continued after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for an Easter pause to the fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested extending any truce for 30 days, saying Ukraine would continue to defend against Russian assaults.
The competing cease-fire proposals came a day after the Trump administration threatened to walk away from its cease-fire efforts in Ukraine. Putin, in a meeting with his top military commander, said the cease-fire would take effect at 6 p.m. Moscow time on Saturday and continue until midnight on Sunday night, lasting 30 hours. The Russian leader said he expected Kyiv to comply.
President Trump said Friday he was running out of patience with the negotiations to end the war, and that his efforts could end “very shortly” if progress wasn’t made soon.
The Russian Defense Ministry said implementation of the cease-fire would be dependent on Ukraine’s agreement.
Zelensky said his top general had told him that Russia was continuing assaults and artillery fire. He said that Ukraine would observe a cease-fire if Russia did, but respond with defensive strikes if Russian attacks continued.
“If Russia is now suddenly ready to truly engage in a format of full and unconditional silence, Ukraine will act accordingly—mirroring Russia’s actions,” Zelensky wrote on X. “Silence in response to silence, defensive strikes in response to attacks.”
Zelensky proposed extending any cease-fire that takes hold over Easter for 30 days, a time frame for a truce initially proposed by the U.S. in March that Ukraine agreed to but Russia declined.
“That is what will reveal Russia’s true intentions—because 30 hours is enough to make headlines, but not for genuine confidence-building measures,” Zelensky said. “Thirty days could give peace a chance.”
Around midnight in Kyiv, Zelensky said of the fighting that “the situation has become quieter” in some areas, while attacks continued in others.
The Russian president said on Saturday that he has always been ready for a deal to end the war, and thanked Trump and other countries for their efforts toward bringing a long-lasting peace. Kyiv has repeatedly warned that Russian cease-fire offers cannot be trusted, and both sides have said that pausing the war would only allow the other side to regroup and rearm.
Offering a brief cease-fire provided an easy diplomatic victory for Putin, analysts said, and represented an effort to stop the U.S. side from disengaging and a way of positioning himself as the leader who most wants peace.
Putin has previously insisted that before agreeing to a pause in hostilities the “root causes” of the war must be resolved. That is the Russian leader’s shorthand for Ukraine’s possible membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and what Moscow perceives as a sidelining of Russian cultural influence in Ukraine.
“If it’s just for a very short period of time, it risks nothing, but plays in his favor as someone who genuinely wants peace,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Paris-based senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
In January 2023, Putin called for a 36-hour cease-fire during Russian Orthodox Christmas as his troops were being pushed back and hit by Ukrainian forces. Zelensky replied that his country wouldn’t agree to any truce that leaves Russian troops occupying its territory. Hostilities continued.
The Trump administration has conducted several rounds of negotiations with both sides to try to resolve the conflict, which the president pledged on the campaign trail to end within 24 hours. But efforts to break the deadlock, including the first direct talks between Washington and Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, have failed to halt the fighting.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the U.S. would shift to other diplomatic priorities if it determined that a deal wasn’t “doable in the next few weeks.” Rubio said the U.S. has presented a framework on how the war might be ended, including a cease-fire, but didn’t say what it entails.
Ukraine last month agreed to a U.S.-backed proposal for a broad and immediate 30-day pause in the conflict, now in its fourth year. But Putin declined, calling for more discussion on a permanent end to the war.
He said any pause in fighting at that point would be to Ukraine’s advantage because Russia is gaining on the battlefield, and a host of issues would need to be resolved before a cease-fire could be reached.
Putin in March agreed to a halt in strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during a phone call with Trump, but he remained resistant to a longer-lasting peace plan. Both sides have accused the other of violating the agreement.
Russia also tied a cease-fire in the Black Sea to the lifting of sanctions.
Meanwhile on Saturday, a prisoner swap brought hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers home. Moscow said 246 of its troops had returned to Russia, and Zelensky said 277 Ukrainians had been released from Russian captivity.
Russian armed forces chief Valery Gerasimov also said Russia had expelled Ukrainian troops from 99.5% of the Kursk region of Russia where Kyiv had seized a pocket of territory last year in the hope of having greater leverage in peace negotiations.
Wall Street Journal