Russia and Ukraine agree to truce for Orthodox Easter

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a truce for Orthodox Easter, with Vladimir Putin saying he's ordered troops to cease fire "in all directions" this weekend. His declaration came after Volodymyr Zelensky issued repeated calls for a ceasefire, all ignored by the Kremlin. Putin said the Russian truce would run from 16:00 local time ( ) on Saturday, 11 April through Easter Sunday, adding that he expected Ukraine to "follow the example" of Russia.

He ordered his forces to be ready to intercept "possible enemy provocations" and any "aggressive actions". Russia's tone, and the attempt to steal the initiative, will make Ukrainians bristle. But Zelensky soon posted on X that Ukraine was "ready for symmetrical steps".

"People need an Easter free from threats and real movement toward peace," he wrote. "Russia has a chance not to return to strikes after Easter as well." But Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has already ruled that out insisting the ceasefire was only temporary, and of an "exclusively humanitarian nature". Earlier this week, Zelensky said he had asked the United States to pass on a proposal for a holiday weekend truce to Moscow, as a first step.

Any respite from the fighting would be welcome for the soldiers along the long front line in eastern Ukraine, where they're hounded relentlessly by attack drones. It would also allow people to relax across the country, where air raid sirens are part of the everyday and Russian missiles and drones continue to kill and injure civilians. Just recently, several people were killed when a drone targeted their bus in Nikopol in the south-east.

In Zhytomyr, just west of Kyiv, a woman died when a missile landed next to her home in the middle of the morning. The sirens went off again in Kyiv shortly after the weekend truce was announced, very late on Thursday night. Overnight, two people were killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region, just east of Dnipro city and two others were killed in the Kharkiv region in the north.

Civilians were injured in both Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. In the Odesa region in the south, the military governor reported drone attacks "almost the entire night" with damage to energy and port infrastructure. Ukraine has also increased its drone attacks on Russia, targeting its energy exports in particular in a series of intense strikes.