Putin announces 30 hour Ukraine ceasefire over Easter. Warring sides swap record number of POW

According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire will last from 6 p.m. Moscow time (1500 GMT) on Saturday to midnight (2100 GMT) following Easter Sunday.

“Guided by humanitarian considerations, today from 18:00 to 00:00 from Sunday to Monday, the Russian side declares an Easter truce. I order that all military actions be stopped for this period,” 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,” Putin said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the ceasefire “another attempt by Putin to play with human lives.” He wrote on X that “air raid alerts are spreading across Ukraine,” and “Shahed drones in our skies reveal Putin’s true attitude toward Easter and toward human life.”

The two sides meanwhile exchanged hundreds of POWs on Saturday. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that 246 Russian service members were returned from territory controlled by Kyiv, and that “as a gesture of goodwill” 31 wounded Ukrainian POWs were transferred in exchange for 15 wounded Russian soldiers in need of urgent medical care.

Both sides thanked the United Arab Emirates for their mediation.

In a further post, Zelenskyy welcomed the prisoner of war exchange, saying that 277 Ukrainian servicemen had returned.

In response to the ceasefire announcement, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Kyiv had in March “agreed unconditionally to the U.S. proposal of a full interim ceasefire for 30 days,” which Russia rejected.

Putin’s ceasefire announcement comes after U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are “coming to a head” and insisted that neither side is “playing” him in his push to end the grinding three-year war.