World leaders have slammed Vladimir Putin’s order of a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine to allow people to mark Orthodox Christmas as hypocrisy.
The Russian despot called on Ukraine’s forces to observe the proposed truce, which would run for 36 hours – from 12pm, January 6 to midnight on January 8. He ordered his defence minister Sergei Shoigu to introduce the ceasefire along the entire line of contact, the Kremlin reported.
But Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak dismissed Putin’s decree, saying it would only be possible when Russia leaves the territory it is occupying.
Western leaders followed suit, with U.S. President Joe Biden claiming it was ‘interesting’ that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches on Christmas and New Year’s.
Vladimir Putin (pictured today) has ordered a temporary ceasefire in the war in Ukraine to allow people to mark Orthodox Christmas, Russian media has reported
The Russian president called on Kyiv to observe the proposed truce, which would run for 36-hours: From 12pm, January 6 to midnight on January 7. Pictured: A Ukrainian soldier fires an RPG near the front lines of Ukraine on January 3
‘I think he’s trying to find some oxygen,’ Biden quipped, while German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said if Putin really wanted peace ‘he would bring his soldiers home’.
‘A so-called ceasefire brings neither freedom nor security to people living in daily fear under Russian occupation,’ Baerbock wrote on Twitter.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser Podolyak said: ‘First. Ukraine doesn’t attack foreign territory & doesn’t kill civilians. As RF (Russian Federation) does. Ukraine destroys only members of the occupation army on its territory.
‘Second. RF must leave the occupied territories – only then will it have a ‘temporary truce’. Keep hypocrisy to yourself.’
Putin did not appear to make his cease-fire order conditional on a Ukrainian agreement to follow suit, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually halt on the 684-mile front line or elsewhere.
‘Taking into account the appeal of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire regime along the entire line of contact of the parties in Ukraine from 12.00 on January 6, 2023 to 24.00 on January 7, 2023,’ Putin said in the order.
‘Proceeding from the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the areas of hostilities, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a ceasefire and allow them to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on Christmas Day.’
This is the first time Russia introduced a full ceasefire in Ukraine since the launch of the offensive in February last year.
Western leaders slammed the Russian president’s order for a ceasefire
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Putin’s peace order was hypocritical
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said if President Vladimir Putin really wanted peace ‘he would bring his soldiers home’
The call for a ceasefire followed an earlier proposal by Russia’s spiritual leader Patriarch Kirill for an Orthodox Christmas truce this week. Pictured: Ukrainian servicemen ride a tank in the village of Torske, Donetsk region, Ukraine December 30, 2022
Emergency service workers extinguish a fire after shelling on the Bakhmut frontline in Ivanivske, Ukraine as Russia-Ukraine war continues on January 2
Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed Russian peace moves as playing for time to regroup their forces and prepare for additional attacks.
At various points during the war that started on Feb. 24, Putin has ordered limited and local truces to allow evacuations of civilians or other humanitarian purposes, although these were not always observed by Russian forces.
Podolyak said the ceasefire declaration was a ‘banal trick’.
‘There is not the slightest desire to end the war,’ he said, adding: ‘There is no need to respond to the obviously manipulative initiatives of the Russian leadership’.
Independent political analyst Tatyana Stanovaya said the ceasefire order is intended to make Putin look reasonable and interested in peace.
The move ‘fits well into Putin’s logic, in which Russia is acting on the right side of history and fighting for justice,’ she said.
‘We must not forget that in this war, Putin feels like a ”good guy”, doing good not only for himself and the ”brotherly nations” but also for the world he’s freeing from the ”hegemony” of the United States,’ Stanovaya, founder of the independent R.Politik think tank, wrote on Telegram.
The call for a ceasefire followed an earlier proposal by Russia’s spiritual leader Patriarch Kirill for an Orthodox Christmas truce this week. The proposal was dismissed by Kyiv as a cynical trap by Moscow.
President Volodymyr Zelensky had proposed a Russian troop withdrawal earlier, before December 25, but Russia rejected it.
Pictured: A man looks at the destroyed Russian military vehicles at an open air exhibition of destroyed Russian equipment in front of the Church of Three Saints in Kyiv on January 5, 2023
The Russian Orthodox Church, which uses the ancient Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7 – later than the Gregorian calendar – although some Christians in Ukraine also mark the holiday on that date.
Kirill has previously justified the war as part of Russia’s ‘metaphysical struggle’ to prevent a liberal ideological encroachment from the West.
On the rainy streets of Kyiv, some questioned the Russians’ sincerity in discussing a truce, with others also calling it hypocrticial.
‘Shall we believe the Russians?’ Svitlana Zhereva asked after Kirill’s proposal. ‘On the one hand they have given their blessings to the war and to kill. On the other hand, they want to present themselves as saints who are against blood spilling.
‘But they should be judged by their actions,’ she added.
A young male resident said: ‘Everybody is preparing [for an attack] because everybody remembers what happened on the New Year when there were around 40 Shahed [suicide drone attacks on Kyiv]. So a new attack can happen.
‘Our air defence system is well prepared, and everybody is used to the attacks and ready. But everything is possible,’ he added. Another man said: ‘Patriarch Kirill rarely says anything adequate and I think that his words are nothing by hypocrisy.’
The Russian Orthodox Church, which uses the ancient Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7 – later than the Gregorian calendar – although some Christians in Ukraine also mark the holiday on that date. Pictured: A Christmas tree is seen in Kyiv on January 2
Despite Putin’s call for a ceasefire, major new supplies of Russian armoured vehicles along with troops and weaponry have been moved to Belarus. Videos show Russian BTR-80K amphibious armoured personnel carriers and BTR-82A APCs on trains.
The move of hardware to Belarus comes as Russia is believed to be planning new offensives against Ukraine from the north.
But Belarus claimed the weaponry was being supplied to its forces for defensive purposes. Yet Putin is pressing Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko to play a more active role in the war.
‘The decision to create a regional grouping of troops on the territory of Belarus was made and is being implemented solely in the interests of strengthening the protection and defence of the Union State, based on the current situation near our borders,’ said the Belarus defence ministry.
‘Personnel, weapons, military and special equipment of the armed forces of the Russian Federation will continue to arrive in the Republic of Belarus.’ The ministry said ‘combat coordination activities’ were planned as well as air force drills.
‘Joint training of the Belarusian and Russian components of the regional grouping of troops is complex in nature and covers not only the combat component, but also all supporting systems,’ the ministry said.
A man carries belongings he recovered from a damaged residential building after a missile strike in Chasiv Yar, eastern Ukraine, on January 5, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Putin spoke by phone with Turkey’s president Thursday and the Kremlin said Putin ‘reaffirmed Russia’s openness to a serious dialogue’ with Ukrainian authorities.
But that professed readiness came with the usual preconditions: that ‘Kyiv authorities fulfill the well-known and repeatedly stated demands and recognise new territorial realities,’ the Kremlin said, referring to Moscow’s insistence that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia and acknowledge other illegal territorial gains.
Russian troops occupy large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine. The Kremlin claims it has annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions despite not controlling them in their entirety.
Previous attempts at peace talks have fallen at that hurdle, as Ukraine demands that Russia withdraws from occupied areas at the very least.
Elsewhere, the head of NATO said he detected no change in Moscow’s stance on Ukraine, insisting that the Kremlin ‘wants a Europe where they can control a neighboring country.’
‘We have no indications that President Putin has changed his plans, his goals for Ukraine,’ NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Oslo.
Erdogan, meanwhile, pressed Putin to declare a ‘unilateral’ ceasefire in Ukraine.
Erdogan spoke to both Putin and Zelensky in his latest attempts as a mediator to broker an end to the 10-month war, that began when the Russian despot ordered the invasion on February 24, 2022.
This is not the first time Putin has expressed that he is ready for peace talks under the conditions set out by Moscow.
On Christmas Day, in an interview with state television about the war in Ukraine, Putin said that Russia is ‘prepared to negotiate some acceptable outcomes’.
In recent days, the Russian army have faced a number of setbacks, with Ukraine striking several targets – resulting in what Kyiv says was hundreds of deaths.
Russia said Wednesday the toll climbed in its worst single reported loss from a Ukrainian strike, which an increasingly criticised Moscow blamed on troops using their mobile phones that gave away their location.
The Ukrainian military’s strategic communications unit has said nearly 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the town of Makiivka in eastern Ukraine, and even Russian commentators have said the death toll may be far higher than the 89 Russia admits.
The death toll in Makiivka is the highest reported by the Russian military in a single strike since its troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The deadly strike came after months of discontent within Russia towards the military following a series of battlefield defeats and a hugely unpopular mobilisation drive.
BTR-82A armoured personnel carriers arrive in Belarus from Russia
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Western allies have renewed a vow to keep supporting Kyiv for as long as it takes to defeat Russia.
In the latest pledge of military help, the French Defense Ministry said it plans talks soon with its Ukrainian counterpart on delivering armored combat vehicles.
France’s presidency says it will be the first time this type of Western-made wheeled tank destroyer is sent to Ukraine’s military.
Also, U.S. President Joe Biden said Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a medium armoured combat vehicle that can serve as a troop carrier, could be sent to Ukraine.
On Thursday evening, German government sources told AFP that Germany and the US are both planning a ‘new step’ in weapons for Ukraine.
The fighting in Ukraine has increasingly become a war of attrition in recent weeks, as winter sets in.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, said Thursday at least five civilians were killed and eight wounded across the country by Russian shelling in the previous 24 hours.
The ongoing intense battle for the eastern city of Bakhmut has left 60% of the city in ruins, Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Thursday.
Ukrainian defenders were holding the Russians back, but the Kremlin’s forces have pummeled the city with months of relentless shelling.
Taking the city in the Donbas region, an expansive industrial area bordering Russia, would not only give Putin a major battlefield gain after months of setbacks, but it also would rupture Ukraine’s supply lines and open the way for Moscow’s forces to press on toward key Ukrainian strongholds in Donetsk.
