US President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a three-day ceasefire running from Saturday 9 May through Monday 11 May, coinciding with Russia's Victory Day commemorations. Posting on Truth Social, Trump said the pause in hostilities would include "a suspension of all kinetic activity" as well as a prisoner-of-war swap of 1,000 detainees from each side. "This request was made directly by me," Trump wrote, thanking both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy for their agreement. "Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought war."
Both leaders confirmed the arrangement. Zelenskyy posted on Telegram that Ukraine would participate and would bring home prisoners, adding pointedly that "Red Square is less important to us than the lives of Ukrainian prisoners we can bring home" — a reference to Moscow's annual Victory Day parade, which marks the Soviet Union's defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said the deal was reached through telephone contacts between the US administration and both sides, following a recent direct call between Putin and Trump in which the two presidents discussed the possibility of a ceasefire during the Victory Day period.
The announcement came after a chaotic sequence of overlapping and largely ignored ceasefires. Russia had previously declared a unilateral two-day truce for 8–9 May; Ukraine had proposed its own indefinite ceasefire starting 6 May, which Moscow ignored. Both sides immediately accused the other of violations after those earlier pauses took effect. Ukrainian officials reported more than 140 attacks and 850 drone strikes in the first hours of the Russian-declared truce, while Moscow said it had intercepted 264 Ukrainian drones and reported strikes on industrial sites in the Yaroslavl, Rostov, and Perm regions, as well as drone incursions toward Moscow itself. Air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv despite the ceasefire being in force.
The broader peace process remains deeply stalled. The main current obstacle is Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region — a largely flat, industrial area that has been a focal point of fighting since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 — around three-quarters of which is under Russian control. Moscow is demanding that Ukrainian forces withdraw from parts of the region they still hold, while Kyiv refuses to cede any territory it controls. Ukraine's chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, was reported to be in Miami for talks with US representatives. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Italy, said Washington remained willing to mediate but would not invest effort without meaningful progress.
The three-day ceasefire, even if imperfectly observed, represents the most concrete diplomatic outcome of months of US mediation efforts. Trump made ending the war a central pledge of his 2024 presidential campaign, but analysts note that Putin has shown little urgency to settle, appearing to calculate that Russia's larger military can outlast Ukraine in a prolonged war of attrition. Whether the prisoner exchange and temporary halt in fighting can build any momentum toward a durable settlement remains uncertain.