RUSSIA and Ukraine confirmed on Friday that they had accepted a United States-mediated three-day ceasefire running from 9 May to 11 May, marking the first jointly acknowledged pause in hostilities for months amid a grinding war that has shown little sign of ending.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the breakthrough earlier in the day, saying the agreement would include a reciprocal exchange of 1,000 prisoners of war from each side.
“I’d like to see a big extension,” Reuters reported Trump saying on Friday evening. “It could be.”
The temporary truce comes after weeks of intensifying missile, drone and artillery attacks between Moscow and Kyiv, alongside growing frustration in Washington over stalled peace negotiations.
Announcing the agreement on Truth Social, Trump said the ceasefire would suspend all “kinetic activity” during the three-day period.
“This request was made directly by me, and I very much appreciate its agreement by President Vladimir Putin and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought War,” Trump wrote.
He added that negotiations aimed at permanently ending the conflict were continuing and said “we are getting closer and closer every day”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy later confirmed the arrangement, saying the agreement had emerged through ongoing American-led mediation efforts and stressing that humanitarian priorities remained central to the talks.
“That is why today, within the framework of the negotiation process mediated by the American side, we received Russia’s agreement to conduct a prisoner of war exchange in the format of 1,000 for 1,000,” Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
The Ukrainian leader also issued a pointedly ironic decree “allowing” Russia’s annual Victory Day military parade to proceed without interference, stating that Ukrainian forces would not target Moscow’s Red Square during the commemorations.
Russia had earlier warned that any Ukrainian attempt to disrupt Saturday’s parade would provoke a massive missile strike on Kyiv.
The ceasefire coincides with one of the most symbolically important dates in Russia’s national calendar. Victory Day commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, following a war in which an estimated 27 million Soviet citizens died, including millions from Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously announced a unilateral two-day ceasefire covering Friday and Saturday’s celebrations, though Kyiv rejected the proposal as politically motivated and instead called for an indefinite truce beginning earlier in the week.
Before Friday’s agreement, both sides accused each other of repeatedly violating their respective ceasefire declarations.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov confirmed Moscow’s acceptance of the American initiative, saying the arrangement had been reached during telephone discussions with U.S. officials.
“An agreement on this matter was reached during our telephone discussions with the U.S. administration,” Ushakov told reporters.
Despite the diplomatic breakthrough, tensions remained high on Friday evening. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian air defences intercepted Ukrainian drones approaching the capital during a seven-hour period ending at approximately 8pm local time.
The latest agreement follows what Zelenskiy described as “substantive talks” between Ukrainian and American officials in Miami, with further visits by U.S. envoys to Kyiv expected in the coming months.
This year’s Victory Day parade in Moscow is expected to differ sharply from previous displays of military power. Unlike earlier ceremonies featuring tanks and intercontinental ballistic missiles, no military hardware is expected to appear in Red Square.
Russia currently controls approximately 19.4 per cent of Ukrainian territory, according to pro-Ukrainian mapping assessments. However, Russian territorial advances have slowed significantly this year, with Moscow reportedly capturing only around 700 square kilometres during the first four months of 2026.
The war has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s direct military involvement in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War between 1941 and 1945. - May 9, 2026
