Ukraine and Russia agree to prisoner swap as Putin announces ceasefire
Russia and Ukraine said on Saturday they had swapped hundreds of prisoners in the largest exchange since the Russian full-scale invasion started over three years ago.
Russia’s ministry of defence said that 246 Russian service members were returned from territory controlled by Kyiv and that, “as a gesture of goodwill”, 31 wounded Ukrainian prisoners of war were transferred in exchange for 15 wounded Russian soldiers in need of urgent medical care.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that 277 Ukrainian “warriors have returned home from Russian captivity.”
The news came as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a temporary Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
According to the Kremlin, the ceasefire will last from 6pm on Saturday to midnight on Easter Sunday, both Moscow time.
“Guided by humanitarian considerations, today from 18.00 to 00.00 from Sunday to Monday, the Russian side declares an Easter truce.
“I order that all military actions be stopped for this period,” Putin said at a meeting with chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov, the Kremlin’s press service quoted him as saying.
“We assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example. At the same time, our troops must be ready to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations from the enemy, any of its aggressive actions,” Putin said.
Zelensky called the ceasefire “another attempt by Putin to play with human lives.”
He wrote on X that “air raid alerts are spreading across Ukraine”, and “Shahed drones in our skies reveal Putin’s true attitude toward Easter and toward human life.”
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 shortly after secretary of state Marco Rubio warned that the US may “move on” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there is no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts have failed to bring an end to the fighting.
In January 2023, Putin had ordered his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral, 36-hour cease-fire for Orthodox Christmas.
Zelensky had stopped short of stating his forces would reject Putin’s request, but dismissed the Russian move as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and prepare additional attacks.
The ceasefire announcement came on the same day as Russia’s defence ministry said its forces pushed Ukrainian forces from one of their last remaining footholds in Russia’s Kursk region.
Russian forces took control of the village of Oleshnya, on the border with Ukraine, the ministry said.
“Units of the North military group have liberated the village of Oleshnya in the Kursk region during active offensive operations,” the ministry said in a statement.
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 seven miles 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 Air Force 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.
Russian attacks damaged farms in the Odesa region and sparked fires in the Sumy region overnight, Ukraine’s state emergency service said on Saturday. Fires were contained, and no casualties were reported.
Russia’s ministry of defence, meanwhile, said its air defence systems shot down two Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday.
By Associated Press Reporters