Putin ordered fighting to stop as of 6pm Moscow time (2pm BST) on Saturday until midnight on Easter Sunday.
“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.
The Ukrainian president dismissed the Kremlin’s proposal as “yet another attempt by Putin to play with human lives”.
Firefighters work at the site of a garment production factory hit by a Russian missile strike on 18 April (Photo: Reuters)
Kyiv official Andriy Kovalenko also accused Russian forces of continuing to open fire on Ukrainian positions despite Putin’s proclamation of an Easter ceasefire.
“This is all with the aim of blaming Ukraine,” said Kovalenko, whose centre is a body within the National Security and Defence Council.
Putin has proclaimed unilateral pauses in fighting in the past with little impact on the battlefield, including a 36-hour proposed truce for Orthodox Christmas in January, 2023, which Kyiv rejected.
The UK’s foreign office in a statement late Saturday urged Russia to commit to a full ceasefire in Ukraine, “not just a one-day pause”.
Trump had vowed to bring a swift end to the war, while shifting US policy from firmly supporting Kyiv towards accepting Moscow’s account of the conflict.
Putin’s “Easter ceasefire” announcement comes a week after a Russian missile attack killed 35 people and wounded nearly 120 in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, including Christians heading to celebrate Palm Sunday. That attack, the deadliest against civilians of the year so far, spurred Kyiv and its European allies to press Washington to take a tougher line towards Moscow.
Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio both said on Friday the US would walk away from efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal (Photo: AP)Russia’s initial full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides, displaced millions of Ukrainian civilians and reduced frontline Ukrainian cities to rubble.
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Kyiv says those terms would be tantamount to surrender and leave it undefended from future Russian attacks.
Separately, Russia and Ukraine both confirmed a swap of prisoners of war on Saturday, mediated by the UAE. Each released 246 prisoners, while a further 31 wounded Ukrainians were transferred in exchange for 15 injured Russian soldiers, the Russian defence ministry said.
With additional reporting from Reuters and the Associated Press.
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