AL HAYAT - Easter truce between Russia and Ukraine falters

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the ceasefire on Thursday, more than a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky first made the proposal.

Both sides had agreed to observe it.

The ceasefire had been due to last for 32 hours, from 4:00 pm (1300 GMT) on Saturday until the end of the day on Sunday, according to the Kremlin.

Yet by late Saturday, Ukraine's military said in a Facebook post that "469 ceasefire violations were recorded, namely: 22 enemy assault actions, 153 shelling attacks, 19 strikes by attack drones... and 275 strikes by FPV drones."

In total, the Ukrainian military said Saturday had seen Russia carry out 57 air strikes and drop 182 guided aerial bombs, along with deploying 3,928 drones and conducting 2,454 shelling attacks "on populated areas and positions of our troops".

In Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, Governor Alexander Khinshtein also accused Kyiv of breaking the truce by attacking a gas station in the town of Lgov with a drone, injuring three people, including a baby.

In his evening address on Saturday, Zelensky called for a longer ceasefire.

"We have put this proposal to Russia, and if Russia again chooses war instead of peace, this will once again demonstrate to the world, and to the United States, who really wants what."

Residents of Kharkiv, a city near the Russian border and targeted by daily attacks, had been wary of the truce.

"It's not for long, a day and a half, so maybe it will hold," hoped Oleg Polyskin, 65.

"But even if you're going to church, there is no 100-percent guarantee that everything will be peaceful... you shouldn't trust Putin and his government," he added.

"It would be nice if nothing happened tonight and it was quiet, without air-raid alerts," said 16-year-old Sofiia Liapina.

"But we can't know -- because our neighbours can't be trusted," she added.

- Last-minute strikes -

Hours before the truce was due to start, Russia launched at least 160 drones at Ukraine, killing four people in the country's east and south and wounding dozens of others, Ukrainian authorities said.

A wave of Ukrainian drones meanwhile sparked a fire at an oil depot and damaged apartment buildings in Russia's southern Krasnodar region, authorities said.

The two sides held a ceasefire for Orthodox Easter last year, but both accused the other of hundreds of violations.

Despite tensions over the truce, the warring sides exchanged 175 prisoners of war each on Saturday, according to officials.

"I still haven't really realised that I'm finally here -- that now I can make my dreams reality, that I am finally free," said Maksym, a Ukrainian soldier freed after four years as a prisoner.

Fourteen civilians were also exchanged: seven on each side.

- Stalled diplomacy -

US-led talks aimed at ending the four-year conflict have stalled in recent weeks because of the war in the Middle East.

Even before the Iran war, progress towards a peace deal in Ukraine had been slow, due to differences 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 that it currently controls -- a demand Kyiv says is unacceptable.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied Russia had discussed the ceasefire with Ukraine or the United States in advance and said it was not linked to negotiations 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.

Russia has made small territorial gains at a high cost.

Kyiv recently managed to push back in the southeast and Russian advances have been slowing since late 2025, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Moscow occupies just over 19 percent of Ukraine, most of which was seized during the first weeks of the conflict.

N.Khamees--al-Hayat