Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to uphold a three-day ceasefire announced by US President Donald Trump while Russia holds its annual Victory Day parade on Saturday, though the event was set to be scaled back over security fears.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the memory of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany a central narrative of his 25-year rule, staging massive annual parades in Moscow on 9 May, in part to rally the Russian population behind the military offensive in Ukraine.
However, a spate of Ukrainian long-range attacks on energy facilities recently prompted the Kremlin to ramp up security measures and downsize this year’s celebrations, with military hardware set to be absent from the parade for the first time in almost two decades.
After two failed attempts at truces this week by both Russia and Ukraine, Trump announced on Friday a three-day ceasefire between both sides would come into effect the following day.
“Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard-fought War,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network, adding the ceasefire would be accompanied by a prisoner exchange.
Zelenskyy issued a decree on Friday ordering the Ukrainian military not to attack the parade and, in a separate statement, confirmed his government would adhere to the ceasefire to enable the swap of 1,000 detainees from each warring side.
“Red Square is less important to us than the lives of Ukrainian prisoners who can be returned home,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the historic site in the Russian capital where the annual event is held.
Moscow also confirmed that it accepted the truce, which Trump said he hoped could be extended.
“It could be. I’d like to see it stopped,” the US president told reporters.
Now in its fifth year, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and US-mediated talks on ending Europe’s largest conflict since World War II have shown little progress since February, when Washington shifted focus to its war against Iran.
Before Trump’s announcement, Ukraine had dismissed a temporary truce by Russia, and hours before Moscow’s ceasefire began, Zelenskyy warned Moscow’s allies against attending the parade.
Russia had threatened a massive strike on the heart of Kyiv if Ukraine disrupted the victory commemoration and urged foreign diplomats to leave the Ukrainian capital ahead of the event.
For the first time in nearly 20 years, Moscow would reduce the scale of the parade with no military equipment on display in the Red Square, and the number of foreign dignitaries in attendance would decrease.
Only the leaders of Belarus, Malaysia and Laos, as well as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, have travelled to Moscow, according to the Kremlin, in contrast to high-profile visitors, including China’s Xi Jinping, during last year’s event.
Authorities had also been intermittently switching off mobile internet in the Russian capital in recent days as a security measure.
