MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s order for a three-day truce with Ukraine to coincide with Moscow\u2019s World War II Victory Day commemorations has taken effect, Russian state media reported.
\nUkraine never agreed to the truce and has dismissed it as theatrics, calling instead for a 30-day ceasefire.
\nThe three-day order began at midnight Thursday (2100 GMT on Wednesday) and is scheduled to last until the end of Saturday, according to the Kremlin.
\n\u201cThe ceasefire … on the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory has begun,\u201d Russia\u2019s state RIA news agency reported.
\nHours before Putin\u2019s order was scheduled to enter force, Moscow and Kyiv traded a slew of aerial attacks, prompting airport closures in Russia and leaving at least two dead in Ukraine.
\nThe Kremlin has said Russian forces will honor Putin\u2019s order to cease fire, but will respond \u201cimmediately\u201d if Ukraine launches any attacks.
\nPutin announced the truce last month as a \u201chumanitarian\u201d gesture, following pressure from the United States to halt his three-year assault on Ukraine.
\nUS President Donald Trump has been trying to broker a lasting ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv since his inauguration, but has failed to extract any major concessions from the Kremlin.
\nPutin rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for an unconditional ceasefire in March, and has since offered only slim contributions to Trump\u2019s peace efforts.
\nUkraine has said it does not believe Russia will adhere to this truce and accused Moscow of hundreds of violations during a previous, 30-hour ceasefire ordered by Putin over Easter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s order for a three-day truce with Ukraine to coincide with Moscow\u2019s World War II Victory Day commemorations has taken effect, Russian state media reported. Ukraine never agreed to the truce and has dismissed it as theatrics, calling instead for a 30-day ceasefire. The three-day order began at midnight Thursday (2100 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80784,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80770\/revisions\/80784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}