MOSCOW/WASHINGTON: Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a unilateral Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, ordering his forces to end hostilities at 6 pm Moscow time (1500 GMT) on Saturday until the end of Sunday. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine.

“Based on humanitarian considerations ... the Russian side announces an Easter truce. I order a stop to all military activities for this period,” Putin told his military chief, Valery Gerasimov, at a meeting in the Kremlin. “We assume that Ukraine will follow our example. At the same time, our troops should be prepared to repel possible violations of the truce and provocations by the enemy, any aggressive actions,” Putin added.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had given instructions on the ceasefire to all group commanders in the area of the “special military operation”, the Kremlin’s term for the war.

Russian troops will adhere to the ceasefire provided it is “mutually respected” by Ukraine, the ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump warned Thursday that Washington would “take a pass” on talks to end the Ukraine war within days unless there is rapid progress from Moscow and Kyiv. His comments came just hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio set the clock ticking, saying in Paris that the United States could “move on” from its role brokering the negotiations.

Trump has been pressing both sides for a truce, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin despite an ice-breaking call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and repeated negotiations with Moscow. “If for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people’—and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Republican Trump refused to cast blame on either Putin, who ordered the February 2022 full-scale invasion of pro-Western Ukraine, or Kyiv’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, insisting both sides had to make progress. But Trump warned that a decision on whether to abandon the talks could come “very shortly”. “No specific number of days, but quickly. We want to get it done,” he added.

Moscow has kept up strikes on Ukraine, killing at least two people and wounding dozens more in attacks on the northeastern regions of Kharkiv and Sumy, Ukrainian officials said. One of the few commitments Trump had wrangled from Russia—a temporary moratorium on striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure—“expired” on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in response to an AFP question. — Agencies