Russia's Putin declares unilateral Easter ceasefire in Ukraine

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 (1500 GMT) 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.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its troops had been instructed about the ceasefire and would adhere to it, provided it was "mutually respected" by Ukraine.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said on Friday the United States would walk away from efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal unless there were clear signs of progress soon.

DOVE EMOJI

Kirill Dmitriev, an envoy for Putin who travelled to Washington this month, posted news of the ceasefire on X, adding: "One step closer to peace" and an emoji of a dove.

Trump has vowed to bring a swift end to the war, while shifting U.S. policy from firmly supporting Kyiv towards accepting Moscow's account of the conflict.

Last month, Ukraine accepted a proposal from Trump for a 30-day truce which Moscow rejected; the sides agreed only to limited pauses of attacks on energy targets and at sea, which both accuse the other of breaking.

Putin's 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.

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.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said this week that some progress on a peace settlement had already been made but that contacts with Washington were difficult.

Russia's 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.