The Ukrainian Army said it was ready to \u201cimmediately\u201d respond if Russia violated it.<\/p>\n
In his evening address, Zelenskyy said: \u201cIt would be right for the ceasefire to continue further\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have put this proposal to Russia, and if Russia again chooses war instead of peace, this will once again demonstrate to the world, and to the United States, who really wants what.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s military command has since reported nearly 470 Russian violations.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter 4pm, 469 ceasefire violations were recorded, namely: 22 enemy assault actions, 153 shelling attacks, 19 strikes by attack drones … and 275 strikes by FPV drones,\u201d it said on Facebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday in total, the enemy carried out 57 air strikes and dropped 182 guided aerial bombs. In addition, it deployed 3928 kamikaze drones and conducted 2454 shelling attacks on populated areas and positions of our troops.\u201d<\/p>\n
Residents of Kharkiv, a city just 30km from the Russian border and targeted by daily attacks, remained wary.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not for long, a day and a half, so maybe it will hold,\u201d hoped Oleg Polyskin, 65.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut even if you\u2019re going to church, there is no 100% guarantee that everything will be peaceful … you shouldn\u2019t trust Putin and his government,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be nice if nothing happened tonight and it was quiet, without air-raid alerts,\u201d said Sofiia Liapina, 16.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we can\u2019t know – because our neighbours can\u2019t be trusted,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Last-minute strikes<\/p>\n
Hours before the truce was due to start, Russia launched at least 160 drones at Ukraine, killing four people in the country\u2019s east and south and wounding dozens of others, Ukrainian authorities said.<\/p>\n
The southern Odesa region was among the hardest hit, with authorities reporting two dead and damage to civilian infrastructure.<\/p>\n
A wave of Ukrainian drones sparked a fire at an oil depot and damaged apartment buildings in Russia\u2019s southern Krasnodar region, authorities said.<\/p>\n
Four people died in Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donetsk and Kherson regions, according to Russian-installed officials.<\/p>\n
The two sides held a ceasefire for Orthodox Easter last year, but both accused the other of hundreds of violations.<\/p>\n
Despite tensions over the truce, the warring sides exchanged 175 prisoners of war each on Saturday, according to officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still haven\u2019t really realised that I\u2019m finally here – that now I can make my dreams reality, that I am finally free,\u201d said Maksym, a Ukrainian soldier freed after four years as a prisoner.<\/p>\n
Fourteen civilians were also exchanged: seven on each side.<\/p>\n
The United Arab Emirates helped mediate the exchange, the Russian Defence Ministry said.<\/p>\n
Prisoner of war exchanges are one of the few areas of co-operation between the warring sides.<\/p>\n
Stalled diplomacy<\/p>\n
United States-led talks aimed at ending the four-year conflict have stalled in recent weeks because of the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Even before the Iran war, progress towards a peace deal in Ukraine had been slow, because of differences over the issue of territory.<\/p>\n
Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.<\/p>\n
But Russia wants Ukraine to give up all the territory in the Donetsk region that it currently controls – a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.<\/p>\n
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russia had discussed the ceasefire with Ukraine or the US in advance and said it was not linked to negotiations to end the war.<\/p>\n
The war has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions to flee their homes, making it Europe\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n
Russia has made small territorial gains at a high cost.<\/p>\n
Kyiv recently managed to push back in the southeast and Russian advances have been slowing since late 2025, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).<\/p>\n
Apart from Ukrainian counter-attacks, analysts attributed Russia\u2019s slowdown to the country being banned from using SpaceX\u2019s Starlink satellites and Moscow\u2019s own efforts to block the Telegram messaging app.<\/p>\n
But the situation is unfavourable for Ukraine in the Donetsk region, near the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, according to the ISW.<\/p>\n
Moscow occupies just over 19% of Ukraine, most of which was seized during the first weeks of the conflict.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ukrainian Army said it was ready to \u201cimmediately\u201d respond if Russia violated it. In his evening address,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6179,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4063,4062,4067,4065,1821,592,913,2673,4070,356,4066,3718,4069,5,4061,2152,3920,25,4064,4071,4068,2392,3262],"class_list":{"0":"post-6178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-amid","9":"tag-begins","10":"tag-begun","11":"tag-between","12":"tag-ceasefire","13":"tag-drone","14":"tag-easter","15":"tag-for","16":"tag-immediately","17":"tag-kyiv","18":"tag-mark","19":"tag-orthodox","20":"tag-respond","21":"tag-russia","22":"tag-russiaukraine","23":"tag-strikes","24":"tag-truce","25":"tag-ukraine","26":"tag-uneasy","27":"tag-violated","28":"tag-warning","29":"tag-with","30":"tag-would"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}