Germany doubtful of Putin’s 3-day ceasefire – DW – 04/29/2025

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius expressed skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine from May 8 to May 10.

Recent experience shows that such declarations often amount to little, the defense minister said. Pistorius pointed to Putin’s Easter ceasefire, which both sides were accused of violating. 

He also said he is counting on continued US support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia, emphasizing that the war affects the security of Europe as a whole.

In an interview with Germany’s RTL/ntv on Monday night, Pistorius insisted that Europe’s security has been of “paramount importance” to the US since World War II, adding that he believed it would continue to be so.

Responding to concerns that the US might reduce its military and financial support for Ukraine, Pistorius said: “We will do everything we can to compensate, but first we will campaign for the Americans to stay on board.”

He also compared a recent US peace proposal to a de facto Ukrainian surrender.

The return of Donald Trump to the US presidency has significantly weakened Finns’ confidence in the security guarantees of the NATO alliance their country joined two years ago, a survey shows.

Only 32% of respondents trusted NATO’s security guarantees to be such a strong deterrent that no one would dare to challenge a member state militarily, according to the survey by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA).

That’s a drop of 21 percentage points from the fall of 2023, when the same question was asked in an EVA survey.

A majority of 66% of Finns still see Finland’s membership as a positive thing, but that was down five percentage points from a previous survey published in November and the lowest level since May 2022, when the country applied for membership following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

The poll also showed that 53% did not believe that membership would guarantee that other countries would “ultimately help Finland in a real crisis.”

Finland, which shares a 1,340-kilometer (800-mile) border with Russia, joined the US-led alliance in April 2023, ending decades of military non-alignment.  

Russia’s overnight drone strike killed a 12-year-old girl and injured her parents in the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine. Another child was rescued from under the rubble, the emergency service said in a social media post.

In Kyiv, an overnight Russian drone strike injured a woman and burned a recreation center, the capital’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia launched 100 drones in an overnight attack. The military said it shot down 37 drones, while 47 others disappeared from radars without reaching their targets.

The attacks caused damage in the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv regions, it added in a Telegram post.

Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its air defense units destroyed 91 Ukrainian drones overnight, with 40 of them downed over the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine.

Welcome to DW’s coverage of developments from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday, April 29.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he’s counting on continued US support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia and expressed skepticism about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire in Ukraine from May 8 to May 10.

In the meantime, Russia and Ukraine are trading drone strikes.

In this blog, we will keep you updated as the day unfolds.