Russia and Ukraine agree two day ceasefire for Orthodox Easter
Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a two-day ceasefire as both countries mark Orthodox Easter.
Listen to this article
Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to hold fire "in all directions" after repeated requests from his counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which were ignored by Moscow.
But the agreed truce will take place from 16:00 local time (13:00 GMT) on Saturday 11 April, through Easter Sunday, with Putin adding that he expected Ukraine to "follow the example" of Russia.
Russia has also ordered its forces to be ready to intercept "possible enemy provocations" and any "aggressive actions".
In response, Zelenskyy took to X where he posted that Ukraine was "ready for symmetrical steps".
He wrote: "People need an Easter free from threats and real movement toward peace/ Russia has a chance not to return to strikes after Easter as well."
It comes days after Zelenskyy said he had asked the United States to pass on a proposal for a holiday weekend truce to Moscow as a first step.
President Trump had threatened to stop supplying weapons for Ukraine in a bid to pressure European allies to join a "coalition of the willing" to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Last month, Zelenskyy said he had a "very bad feeling" about the impact of the Middle East conflict on the efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
The pause in fighting between Russia and Ukraine will also allow people to relax temporarily after several people were killed when a drone targeted a bus in Nikopol in the south-east of Ukraine.
A woman died when a missile landed next to her home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, in the middle of the morning.
The news of the mini ceasefire is likely to raise scepticism among Ukrainians, after earlier this year when Russia claimed it had called an "energy truce" – halting strikes on Ukraine's power plants.
However, the pause lasted just long enough to prepare the missiles for the next major attack.