Russia’s Putin Orders Cease-Fire in Ukraine for May 8-10, Kremlin Says

Ukraine’s foreign minister responded with skepticism to the unexpected announcement.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered a three-day unilateral cease-fire in Ukraine next week, the Kremlin said on Monday, soon after President Trump reiterated his frustration with Russia’s refusal to stop the war.

The Kremlin said that Russian forces would stop fighting on May 8 for 72 hours to mark the May 9 celebration of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II, a major holiday in Russia. The announcement was the second time in two weeks that Russia promised a temporary pause in the fighting.

“During this period, all hostilities will cease,” the Kremlin said in a statement. “Russia believes that the Ukrainian side should follow this example.”

Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said the declaration “underlines our willingness to get on the path toward a peaceful resolution.”

However, Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister, responded to the Kremlin statement by saying that “if Russia truly wants peace, it must cease fire immediately.” He added that Ukraine remained ready for a 30-day halt in the fighting, something that Mr. Putin has thus far rejected.

“Why wait until May 8th?” Mr. Sybiha wrote on X. He continued, “Ukraine is ready to support a lasting, durable, and full ceasefire.”

The Kremlin’s announcement came just days after Mr. Trump urged Mr. Putin, in a social media post, to “STOP!” bombarding Ukraine amid U.S.-backed efforts to broker a truce. After meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Saturday, Mr. Trump said that he questioned whether Mr. Putin truly wanted peace.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post.

Russia has refused to abide by a 30-day unconditional cease-fire that Ukraine previously agreed to at the urging of the Trump administration. A one-day truce announced by Mr. Putin for Easter did not hold, though both sides said it brought a reduction in hostilities.

Mr. Putin’s declaration on Monday appeared to be his latest attempt to placate Mr. Trump’s oft-stated desire to end the war in Ukraine while holding out for an agreement that would allow the Russian leader to do so on his terms.

When asked about the Kremlin’s announcement, Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s press secretary, told reporters that the U.S. president “has made it clear he wants to see a permanent cease-fire.”

“While he remains optimistic he can strike a deal, he’s also being realistic as well, and both leaders need to come to the table to negotiate their way out of this,” Ms. Leavitt added.

The Kremlin’s statement announcing the cease-fire said that Russia was ready “for peace negotiations without preconditions.” But it added that those talks should be “directed at eliminating the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis,” a reference to Mr. Putin’s sweeping demands for change in Russia’s favor in Ukraine and in Europe.

Mr. Putin appears convinced that he would give up negotiating leverage if he were to stop fighting without securing major concessions first, Russian analysts and people close to the Kremlin say. His demands go well beyond claims on Ukraine’s territory, extending to limits on its future military capability and a ban on admitting it to the NATO alliance.

The Trump administration has largely gone along with Mr. Putin’s narrative, dangling the possibility of lifting sanctions on Russia while blaming Ukraine for a war that Russia started in 2022. It has been pushing Ukraine to accept a peace plan that would force it to abandon its aspirations of joining NATO, provide it with only vague security guarantees and have the United States officially recognize Crimea as Russian. Ukraine has rejected that deal, which the Trump administration described as its final offer.

But Mr. Putin appears to be holding out for even more. In the meantime, his refusal to make a quick deal — accompanied by recent Russian missile strikes on civilian targets — has increasingly frustrated the Trump administration.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, at Mr. Lavrov’s request, according to a spokeswoman for the State Department, Tammy Bruce. “The United States is serious about facilitating an end to this senseless war,” she said in a statement.

Maria Varenikova and Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• Ukraine’s Reliance on Drones: Should the peace talks fail, or the United States discontinue arms shipments, the Ukrainian drone initiative is likely to take on more importance.
• Putin Thanks Kim: Moscow and Pyongyang confirmed that North Korean troops have been fighting shoulder to shoulder with Russia’s, saying they had helped liberate the Kursk border region from Ukrainian forces.
• Deadly Car Blast: An explosion killed a senior Russian military officer in a Moscow suburb, investigators said, the latest in a series of apparent assassinations targeting Ukraine’s opponents inside Russia.
• Europe’s Choices if America Walks Away: Europeans see Ukraine’s security as vital to their own and want to defend the principle of no border changes by force, even if President Trump does not.
• Air Raids and Antidepressants: Sleep deprivation has become a health crisis in Ukraine, experts and psychologists say. They cite near-nightly drone attacks as one of the major impediments.
• Teaching His Invaders: Vitalii Dribnytsia, a former Ukrainian teacher, spends several hours almost every day engaging with Russians online to correct Kremlin propaganda about his country. He has come to realize his more important audience is Ukrainians themselves.

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• Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
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