The Kremlin’s Orthodox Easter ceasefire took effect Saturday with the promise of a brief pause in fighting, but Ukraine said the truce quickly ran into the reality of modern battlefield tactics, including drone strikes.
Serhii Kolesnychenko, a communications officer for Ukraine’s 148th Separate Artillery Brigade, told The Associated Press that “The ceasefire is not being observed by the Russian side.” He said artillery fire had paused in the sector where his brigade was operating at the junction of the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, but that Russian forces continued to use drones to strike Ukrainian positions. Kolesnychenko said Ukrainian forces would respond with “silence to silence and fire to fire.”
Putin had announced the ceasefire on Thursday, ordering Russian forces to halt hostilities from 4 p.m. Saturday until the end of Sunday as part of the Orthodox Easter weekend. Zelenskyy said Ukraine would comply, calling it “an opportunity to build on peace initiatives,” while also warning that any violations would trigger a swift military response. In an online post on Saturday, Zelenskyy wrote: “Easter should be a time of silence and safety. A ceasefire (at) Easter could also become the beginning of real movement toward peace,” and added: “We all understand who we are dealing with. Ukraine will adhere to the ceasefire and respond strictly in kind.”
Even before the pause began, Ukrainian authorities described attacks linked to the countdown to Saturday. Hours before the ceasefire was due to start, Russian drone strikes overnight killed at least two people in Odesa, local authorities reported, and a further two people were wounded when drones hit a residential area that damaged apartment buildings, houses and a kindergarten. In Kherson, regional head Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram that a public trolley bus driver was killed after the vehicle was struck by a drone less than an hour before the ceasefire began.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia targeted Ukraine with 160 drones overnight, with 133 shot down or intercepted, ahead of the ceasefire taking effect. Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down 99 Ukrainian drones overnight across Russia and occupied Crimea, a figure given alongside the ceasefire announcement as the two sides exchanged competing accounts of air activity.
The truce unfolded against the backdrop of a war in its fifth year and months of failed attempts to negotiate broader terms, even as prisoner exchanges continued. Russia’s Defense Ministry said a prisoner swap Saturday brought home 175 of its soldiers. Zelenskyy confirmed the exchange, saying 175 service members and seven civilians were returned, and wrote on X: “Most had been held in captivity since 2022. And finally, they are home.”
Images from northern Ukraine showed hundreds of relatives gathering around ambulances and buses carrying returning prisoners of war, with many calling out names and brigade numbers. Some held up portraits of others still missing, asking released prisoners whether they recognized anyone. Svitlana Pohosyan, waiting for her son’s return, said she wanted to believe the ceasefire: “I want to believe it. God willing, may it be so. We will believe and hope that everything will be fine, that a ceasefire will come on such a holy day, and that there will be peace — peace in Ukraine and peace in the whole world.” She added, “My celebration will come when my son returns,” and said she would hold him “in my arms,” calling it “the greatest celebration for me. And for every mother, every family.”
Separately, Russian state media reported that seven residents of Russia’s Kursk region returned from Ukraine on Saturday after they were captured by the Ukrainian army. Russia’s human rights ombudswoman, Tatyana Moskalkova, said at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border that the returnees were the last of those taken to Ukraine from Kursk after Ukrainian forces took control of parts of the region in 2024. Ukrainian forces carried out a surprise incursion into Kursk in August 2024, the first time Russian territory was occupied by an invader since World War II, according to the report.