An uneasy truce between Russia and Ukraine to mark the Orthodox Easter has begun, with Kyiv warning it would respond “immediately” if Russia violated it.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the ceasefire on Thursday, more than a week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed it.

Both sides have agreed to observe it.

The ceasefire was due to last for 32 hours, from 4pm Saturday (1am NZT) until the end of Sunday, according to the Kremlin.

“Ukraine will adhere to the ceasefire and respond strictly in kind. The absence of Russian strikes in the air, on land and at sea will mean no response from our side,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.

The Ukrainian army said it was ready to “immediately” respond if Russia violated it.

In his evening address Saturday, Zelensky said: “It would be right for the ceasefire to continue further”.

“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.”

Ukraine’s military command has since reported nearly 470 Russian violations of a truce agreed to mark the Orthodox Easter.

“After 4pm, 469 ceasefire violations were recorded, namely: 22 enemy assault actions, 153 shelling attacks, 19 strikes by attack drones ... and 275 strikes by FPV drones,” it said on Facebook.

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“Today in total, the enemy carried out 57 air strikes and dropped 182 guided aerial bombs. In addition, it deployed 3928 kamikaze drones and conducted 2454 shelling attacks on populated areas and positions of our troops.”

Residents of Kharkiv, a city just 30 kilometres from the Russian border and targeted by daily attacks, remained wary.

“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% 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 Sofiia Liapina, 16.

“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.

The southern Odesa region was among the hardest hit, with authorities reporting two dead and damage to civilian infrastructure.

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

Four people died in Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Kherson regions, according to Russian-installed officials.

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.

The United Arab Emirates helped mediate the exchange, the Russian defence ministry said.

Prisoner of war exchanges are one of the few areas of cooperation between the warring sides.

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, because of differences over the issue of territory.

Ukraine has proposed freezing the conflict along the current front lines.

But Russia 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).

Apart from Ukrainian counter-attacks, analysts attributed Russia’s slowdown to the country being banned from using SpaceX’s Starlink satellites and Moscow’s own efforts to block the Telegram messaging app.

But the situation is unfavourable for Ukraine in the Donetsk region, near the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, according to the ISW.

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

- Agence France-Presse