President Donald Trump announced a three-day ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine covering May 9, 10, and 11, tying the suspension of hostilities to Russia’s Victory Day celebrations and accompanying it with an exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each side. The announcement, made via Truth Social on Friday evening, was confirmed by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, marking the first moment of coordinated diplomatic alignment between the two countries in months.
Trump said the request was made directly by him to both leaders, and framed the ceasefire as a potential turning point. “Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought War,” he wrote, adding that negotiations toward a broader peace settlement were continuing and moving closer to a resolution daily.
Zelenskyy confirmed the prisoner exchange arrangement on Telegram, calling it a priority for his government and thanking the US for what he described as effective diplomatic engagement.
Russia had previously announced a separate two-day unilateral ceasefire to coincide with its Victory Day parade in Moscow, but that truce quickly collapsed amid mutual accusations of violations. Ukraine had also declared its own unilateral ceasefire earlier in the week, which similarly failed to hold. The Trump-brokered arrangement represents an attempt to bring both sides to a shared framework, coordinated through the US as intermediary.
The Kremlin cautioned against reading too much into the short pause. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, told Russian state television that a comprehensive peace agreement remained a complex undertaking and that the American side’s urgency should not be conflated with the likelihood of a swift conclusion.
Ushakov similarly stressed that the ceasefire was strictly time-limited to three days, even as Trump expressed hope it could be extended.
Zelenskyy issued a presidential decree restricting Ukrainian weapons from targeting the Red Square perimeter during the parade timeframe, though this was narrowly drawn and did not amount to a broader ceasefire across Russian territory. Russia’s Victory Day this year featured scaled-back celebrations, with traditional tank and missile displays omitted from the Moscow parade for the first time in decades, a reflection of military resources being directed toward the ongoing conflict. The prisoner swap and the diplomatic framing around it represent the most tangible, if limited, progress toward conflict resolution since the war entered its fifth year.
