Today at dawn, as the sunlight illuminated the pockmarked terrains of Eastern Europe, a peculiar quietness took over the place instead of the customary sound of exploding ammunition. It is for the first time since months ago that the “kinetic activity,” defining the existence of millions has ceased completely. The ceasefire of three days’ length, achieved through a vigorous diplomacy campaign led by the United States, creates a rather fragile peace in a four-year-long war. The truce may be short-lived, but the scale of the compromise is tremendous, including a prisoner exchange of considerable magnitude and taking place at one of the most symbolic periods of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The three-day-long truce between May 9th and May 11th, agreed to by the leaders in Moscow and Kyiv after a request made by President Donald Trump, was announced late Friday. Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy committed themselves to halting the hostilities completely during those three days. An important element in the deal is a swap of prisoners of 1,000 each from both sides. As such, more than 2,000 prisoners, whose families were anxiously awaiting this day, will return home within the next 72 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As one can easily imagine, the choice of the period for the truce was not made randomly. Today marks Victory Day when the Soviet Union won its war against Nazi Germany. Traditionally, the holiday is associated with parades and demonstrations of the country’s military power, something that is absent this year because of concerns about Ukrainian drone attacks that have recently targeted Russian strategic infrastructure. Consequently, the Kremlin opted for an abbreviated parade with little of the heavy machinery displayed annually in Red Square. Kyiv’s acceptance of the ceasefire is a “permit” to Moscow to carry out its celebrations, although President Zelenskyy called it a sacrifice. “Red Square is less important to us than the lives of our Ukrainian prisoners,” he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even despite the official confirmation of the truce, the mood surrounding this deal could be considered skeptical. During the last couple of days, both countries have been engaged in a “war of ceasefires,” announcing their intentions to stop the fighting unilaterally and accusing each other of breaches immediately afterwards. Putin had even declared his country’s readiness for launching “massive retaliatory strikes” on Kyiv in case of disruptions of today’s holiday. Nevertheless, the U.S.-led negotiations act as a referee for this conflict, and it seems like Washington is responsible for monitoring the observance of the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The relative quiet on the war zone is currently being characterized by officials as “the beginning of the end,” although many experts express doubts concerning the possibility of that being true. Whatever the case may be, the ceasefire is an opportunity for the soldiers in the trenches to rest and mourn. Whether the truce turns into a permanent solution to the ongoing bloodshed remains unclear, but the world awaits impatiently to find out if there will be no more gunfire heard till Monday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today at dawn, as the sunlight illuminated the pockmarked terrains of Eastern Europe, a peculiar quietness took over the place instead of the customary sound of exploding ammunition. It is for the first time since months ago that the “kinetic activity,” defining the existence of millions has ceased completely. The ceasefire of three days’ length, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":961,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sb_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-world-news"],"relative_dates":{"created":"4 days ago","modified":"4 days ago"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thejournalistic.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}