SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a momentary Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, citing humanitarian motives, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
The news came on the same day as Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces pushed Russian soldiers from one of their last remaining strongholds in Russia’s Kursk area where the Ukrainians staged a surprise invasion last month.
According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire will begin at 6pm on Saturday Moscow day and ending at midnight on Easter Sunday.
“We assume that the Russian side did follow our example. At the same time, our troops had been ready to fight possible violations of the peace and actions from the army, any of its aggressive behavior, ” Putin said at a conference with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, in a video shared by the Kremlin’s Press Service.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the peace “another effort by Putin to sing with human life. ” He wrote on X that “air attack emails are spreading across Ukraine, ” and “Shahed robots in our clouds reveal Putin’s correct mindset toward Easter and toward human existence. ”
Putin’s announcement came after US 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.
Trump spoke soon after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the US does “move on ” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace cope if there is no improvement in the coming weeks, after decades of work have failed to bring an end to the fighting.
In January 2023, Putin had ordered his troops in Ukraine to see a punitive, 36-hour cease-fire for Conservative Christmas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had stopped short of stating his forces would accept Putin’s demand, but dismissed the Russian proceed as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and create further attacks.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday its forces took control of the village of Oleshnya, in the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine. The Associated Press was unable to immediately verify the claim and there was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials.
According to Russian state news agency Tass, Russia is still fighting to push Ukrainian forces out of the village of Gornal, some 11 kilometres south of Oleshnya.
“The Russian military has yet to push the Ukrainian armed forces out of Gornal… in order to completely liberate the Kursk region. Fierce fighting is underway in the settlement, ” the agency reported, citing Russia security agencies.
Russian and North Korean soldiers have nearly deprived Kyiv of a key bargaining chip by retaking most of the region, where Ukrainian troops staged a surprise incursion last year.
In other developments, the Ukrainian airforce reported that Russia fired 87 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks overnight into Saturday. It said 33 of them were intercepted and another 36 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
