Temporary Russian cease-fire in Ukraine begins amid uncertainty and suspicion
An uneasy quiet settled over Kyiv on Friday despite air-raid sirens that blared there and across Ukraine shortly after a Russian cease-fire declaration for Orthodox Christmas went into effect. Ukrainian and Western officials have scorned the truce as a ploy.
No explosions were heard in the capital. And reports of sporadic fighting elsewhere in Ukraine could not immediately be confirmed. Clashes there could take hours to become public.
Kyiv residents ventured out into a light dusting of snow to buy gifts, cakes and groceries for Christmas Eve family celebrations, hours after the cease-fire was to have started.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire. Ukrainian officials dismissed the move as a ploy, without clarifying whether their own troops would follow suit.
The Russian-declared truce in the nearly 11-month war began at noon Friday and was to continue through midnight Saturday Moscow time (1 a.m. Friday to 1 p.m. Saturday PT).
An old Ukrainian sanatorium has been converted into a recovery center where service members can get treatment for both mental and physical ailments.
Air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv about 40 minutes after the Russian cease-fire was to come into effect. The widely used “Alerts in Ukraine” app, which includes information from emergency services, showed sirens blaring across the country.
The Russian military alleged that Ukrainian forces continued to shell its positions despite the unilateral cease-fire. Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces returned fire to suppress the attacks, although it wasn’t entirely clear from the statement whether the attacks and the return of fire took place before or after the cease-fire took effect.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov reported multiple Ukrainian attacks in the eastern Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. It was not possible to verify the claims.
United Nations staffers on the ground in Ukraine “have not seen reports of intense or major fighting,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. But he cautioned that “they’re not everywhere.”
Putin’s announcement Thursday that the Kremlin’s troops would stop fighting along the nearly 700-mile front line or elsewhere was unexpected. It came after the Russian Orthodox Church head, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a cease-fire for this weekend’s Orthodox Christmas holiday. The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7.
The Russian military said measures were being taken to prevent a repeat of the rocket attack that killed at least 89 of its soldiers in Ukraine.
But Ukrainian and Western officials portrayed the announcement as an attempt by Putin to grab the moral high ground while possibly seeking to regain the battlefield initiative and rob the Ukrainians of momentum amid their counteroffensive of recent months.
“Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to stop the advance of our guys in the Donbas for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late Thursday.
Zelensky did not, however, state outright that Kyiv would ignore Putin’s request.
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In a Christmas Eve message to the nation, Zelensky called it “a holiday of harmony and family unity. And together we are all a big Ukrainian family.
“No matter where we are now — at home, at work, in a trench, on the road, in Ukraine or abroad — our family is united as never before. ... United in its belief in a single victory.”
President Biden echoed Zelensky’s wariness, saying it was “interesting” that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches on the Dec. 25 Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
In a country where children have seen the horrors of a 10-month war, some are trying to bring them a ray of happiness during this holiday season.
“I think [Putin] is trying to find some oxygen,” Biden said.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “little faith in the intentions behind this announcement,” adding that Kremlin officials “have given us no reason to take anything that they offer at face value.”
Russia has sent a frigate armed with the country’s latest hypersonic weapons on a transoceanic cruise in a show of force amid tensions with the West.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War agreed that the truce could be a maneuver to allow Russia to regroup.
“Such a pause would disproportionately benefit Russian troops and begin to deprive Ukraine of the initiative,” the think tank said late Thursday. “Putin cannot reasonably expect Ukraine to meet the terms of this suddenly declared cease-fire and may have called for the cease-fire to frame Ukraine as unaccommodating and unwilling to take the necessary steps toward negotiations.”
Overwhelming evidence shows Russian troops have disregarded international laws governing treatment of civilians and conduct on the battlefield.
And Anna Borshchevskaya, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, said that whether or not the cease-fire holds, “I don’t take it at face value.”
“When Russia announces cease-fires, in the way Russia conducts war, there are usually ulterior motives,” she said. “Historically, what the Russian government and Russian military usually do when they announce a cease-fire is to use it as a tactical opportunity, to just take a breather or gain a little bit of space.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. reiterated its support for Kyiv on Friday with a new $3.75-billion military assistance package for Ukraine and its neighbors on NATO’s eastern flank. The latest tranche of assistance will for the first time include Bradley armored vehicles for Ukraine.
The armored carrier is used to transport troops to combat and is known as a “tank-killer” because of its anti-tank missile. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Bradleys will be particularly useful to Ukraine in ongoing fighting in largely rural areas of eastern Ukraine.
Germany also plans to send armored personnel carriers by the end of March.
Some civilians on the streets of Kyiv said they spoke from bitter experience in doubting Russia’s motives.
Throughout the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, Russian workers are tearing down bombed-out buildings and hauling away bodies along with debris.
“Everybody is preparing [for an attack], because everybody remembers what happened on the New Year when there were around 40 Shahed [Iranian drones],” resident Vasyl Kuzmenko said. “But everything is possible.”
At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was sending wishes from his heart “to the Eastern churches, both the Catholic and the Orthodox ones, that tomorrow will celebrate the birth of the Lord.”
Speaking on Friday to thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Roman Catholic Church’s Epiphany feast day, Francis said: “In a special way, I would like my wish to reach the brothers and sisters of martyred Ukraine,” and prayed for peace there.
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