• Ceasefire will remain effective from May 9 to 11.
• Swap of 1000 prisoners part of ceasefire: Trump.
• Trump appreciates Putin, Zelensky over agreement.
  

US President Donald Trump on Friday announced on social media that there would be a three-day ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine from May 9 until May 11 to mark the end of World War Two for the Russians.

Trump had said after a phone call with Putin on April 29 that a temporary ceasefire was in the works. Putin announced a similar truce last year that lasted three days but was not agreed with Kyiv.

Trump said in a Truth Social post that the pause will include a suspension of all kinetic activity, and also a prison swap of 1,000 prisoners from each country.

“Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard-fought war,” he said, adding that there was constant progress in talks to end the conflict.

Russia announced a ceasefire for May 8 to 9 to coincide with commemorations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II and a military parade in Moscow’s Red Square.

Ukraine announced its own proposal for an open-ended ceasefire that started at midnight on Tuesday (2100 GMT), urging Russia to reciprocate.

Officials said on Thursday that Ukraine’s top negotiator, Rustem Umerov, had arrived in Miami for a series of meetings with US representatives as peace talks on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine have stalled in recent months.

The US-brokered talks ⁠are deadlocked over Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Moscow demands Kyiv pull troops back from parts of the region it has failed to capture in its four-year full-scale invasion. Ukraine says it will not cede land that it controls.

Moscow and Kyiv have both accused each other of violating ceasefires that each has separately declared.

The spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Tehran’s response to a proposal by the United States to end the war against the Islamic Republic is still under review, paying no heed to the Americans’ deadlines.

“The [US] proposal is still being reviewed, and once we reach a conclusion, we will announce it,” Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters on Friday.

Regarding some reports that the Americans have set a deadline for Iran to respond to the plan, he once again affirmed that the matter is still being examined.

“We are doing our own job and pay no attention to such deadlines,” Baghaei emphasized.

The Iranian spokesperson’s remarks came after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that Washington expected to receive Iran’s response to a US proposal later in the day.

The US and Israel initiated an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran since February 28 after assassinating Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and several high-ranking military commanders.

A Pakistani-mediated ceasefire was brokered on April 8, but subsequent talks failed to turn into an agreement due to Washington’s excessive demands.

Iranian officials have repeatedly criticized the United States for its approach to talks as the White House seeks to impose conditions rather than engage in genuine give-and-take.

In a Wednesday post on X, Baghaei elaborated on Tehran’s understanding of what negotiations entail, citing international law.

The concept of talks “needs ‘good faith’, then, meaning that ‘negotiations’ is not ‘disputation’; nor is it ‘dictation’, ‘deception’, ‘extortion’ or ‘coercion’,” he explained.

On the same day, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf dismissed certain reports about a supposed impending arrangement between Tehran and Washington, describing them as misleading and part of recurring fake media narratives originating in the United States.

In a post on X, Qalibaf referred to allegations published by the US-based outlet Axios regarding such an arrangement, ironically describing them as “Operation Fauxios.”

He suggested that the circulation of such reports reflected a routine pattern in US media coverage, particularly stories attributed to unnamed sources that Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected as unfounded and have later been proven invariably wrong.

Airlines must not charge customers extra fuel fees after they have already bought tickets, the EU warned on Friday, as the aviation sector feels the pain from high energy prices because of the Middle East war.

“Airlines may adapt their published fares to the situation, but adding a fuel surcharge to a ticket after it has been bought cannot be justified,” EU spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told reporters in Brussels.

Any changes post-booking can “raise issues under the EU’s unfair commercial practices”, she added.

In a document published on Friday on the energy crisis affecting the aviation sector, the EU said “any retroactive change of the price is excluded”.

“Airlines may not include terms and conditions which would allow them to increase the price of the ticket above what is advertised at the time of purchase simply because fuel was more expensive than they had accounted for,” the European Commission said.

The only exception is for package holidays if the seller has made it clear in the contract there could be a possibility of fuel-related changes to the costs.

In such cases, an increase of up to 8% is allowed, but if it is higher, the customer can accept or they have the right to cancel their booking.

Spanish low-cost carrier Volotea has been criticised in France where it is under investigation after demanding fuel surcharges from customers because of the energy shock from the war.

Gilles Gosselin, the airline’s France director, has defended the measure.

“The legality of our system has been confirmed by three independent law firms specialising in air transport and consumer law. The measure is transparent, it is temporary, and it works both ways”, up and down, Gosselin told AFP in France.