- The temporary ceasefire will last for 32 hours.
- Kiev warns that it will respond if Russia violates it.
- UAE helps mediate prisoner exchange, Russian ministry says.
KYIV: A temporary ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine took effect on Saturday, with Kiev warning it would respond “immediately” if Russia violated it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the cease-fire to coincide with Orthodox Easter on Thursday, more than a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first made the proposal.
Both sides have agreed to abide by it.
According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire must last for 32 hours from 16:00 (1300 GMT) Saturday to end of day Sunday.
“Ukraine will observe the ceasefire and respond strictly in kind. The absence of Russian attacks in the air, on land and at sea will mean no response from our side,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on X.
The Ukrainian army said it was ready to “immediately” respond if Russia violated it.
Hours before the ceasefire was due to begin, Russia launched at least 160 drones against Ukraine, killing four people in the country’s east and south and wounding dozens of others, Ukrainian authorities said.
The southern Odesa region was among the hardest hit, with authorities reporting two deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure.
A wave of Ukrainian drones sparked a fire at an oil depot and damaged apartment buildings in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, authorities said.
Four people died in Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian-held parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Kherson regions, according to Russian-installed officials.
Ukrainians have expressed skepticism about whether the ceasefire will last.
The two sides held a ceasefire for Orthodox Easter last year, but each accused the other of hundreds of violations.
Despite tensions over the ceasefire, the warring sides exchanged 175 prisoners of war every Saturday, according to officials.
The United Arab Emirates helped broker the exchange, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Prisoner of war exchanges are one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring sides.
Stalled, diplomacy
US-led talks aimed at ending the four-year conflict have stalled in recent weeks due to the war in the Middle East.
Even before the Iran war, progress toward a peace deal in Ukraine had been slow due to disputes over the issue of territory.
Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.
But Russia has rejected this, saying it wants Ukraine to give up all the territory in the Donetsk region it currently controls – a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.
Several rounds of US-led talks have failed to bring the warring sides closer to an agreement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russia had discussed the truce with Ukraine or the United States in advance, saying it was not linked to talks to end the war.
The war has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions to flee their homes, making it Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
After four years, the fighting on the front has almost come to a standstill.
Russia has made small territorial gains at a high cost.
But Kyiv recently managed to push back in the southeast, and Russian progress has slowed since late 2025, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Aside from Ukrainian counterattacks, analysts attributed the slowdown to Russia being banned from using SpaceX’s Starlink satellites and Moscow’s own efforts to block the Telegram messaging app.
But the situation is unfavorable for Ukraine in the Donetsk region, near the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, according to ISW.
Moscow occupies just over 19 percent of Ukraine, most of which was seized in the first weeks of the conflict.
