(May 9): US President Donald Trump announced a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine over the weekend, after Moscow pushed Kyiv for a temporary truce to allow Vladimir Putin to host a parade in his capital.
The ceasefire, which Trump said would last May 9-11, coincides with Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, the US president said in a social media post on Friday.
Putin’s push for a brief truce — on the day Russia marks the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II — allows the Kremlin leader to preside over a military parade on Red Square without fear that Ukraine would target the event in retaliation for Russia’s ongoing invasion.
Ukraine has intensified strikes on Russia in recent months, regularly hitting locations deeper inside the country. In one of the latest attacks, a drone hit a residential tower in an upscale Moscow district on Monday.
Trump said Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had both agreed to the proposal.
Russia later confirmed that Russia agreed to Trump’s ceasefire proposal, Interfax reported. The Kremlin had said after a Putin-Trump phone call last week that it was ready to agree to one on May 9.
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Zelenskiy said on Friday, “We expect the United States to ensure that the Russian side fulfils these agreements,” noting that Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners of war each.
“Red Square is less important to us than the lives of Ukrainian prisoners who can be brought home,” Zelenskiy wrote in a social media post.
The US president has struggled to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, despite saying on the campaign trail that it would be easy to do so when he returned to the White House.
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While Trump wrote that “hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard-fought war”, his own top diplomat said earlier on Friday the US doesn’t want to “waste our time” on “an effort that’s not moving forward”.
“While we are prepared to play whatever role we can to bring it to a peaceful diplomatic resolution, unfortunately, right now those efforts have stagnated,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “But we always stand ready if those circumstances change.”
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