(ANSA-AFP) - BAKHMUT, 06 GEN - Artillery exchanges pounded
war-scarred cities in eastern Ukraine on Friday despite Russian
leader Vladimir Putin unilaterally ordering his forces to pause
attacks for 36 hours for the Orthodox Christmas. The brief
ceasefire declared by Putin earlier this week was supposed to
begin at 0900 GMT Friday and would have been the first full
pause since Moscow's invasion in February 2022.
But AFP journalists heard both outgoing and incoming shelling
in the frontline city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine after the
time when the Russian ceasefire was supposed to have begun.
Moscow's forces also struck Kramatorsk in the east, the
Ukrainian presidential administration said, as well as the
frontline town of Kurakhove where residential buildings and a
medical facility were damaged. Putin's order to stop fighting
during the Orthodox Christmas came after Moscow suffered its
worst reported loss of life in the war and as Ukraine's allies
pledged to send armoured vehicles and a second Patriot air
defence battery to aid Kyiv.
- Ceasefire 'not serious' -
Kyrylo Tymoshenko from the Ukraine president's office earlier
said that Moscow's forces had struck a fire station in southern
city of Kherson in an attack that left several people dead or
wounded. "They talk about a ceasefire. This is who we are at war
with," he said. The head of Ukraine's Lugansk region meanwhile
added that Russian forces had fired 14 times on Kyiv's position
in the regions and attempted to storm a settlement held by
Ukrainian forces.
Russia's defence ministry said however it was respecting its
unilateral ceasefire and accused Ukraine's forces of continued
shelling. Both countries celebrate Orthodox Christmas and the
Russian leader's order came following ceasefire calls from
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia's spiritual
leader Patriarch Kirill, a staunch Putin supporter. Ukraine had
already dismissed the halt -- due to last until the end of
Saturday (2100 GMT) -- as a strategy by Russia to gain time to
regroup its forces and bolster its defences following a series
of battlefield reversals.
The French foreign ministry described the so-called ceasefire
as a "crude" attempt by Russia to divert attention from its
culpability for the war. While the EU's most senior diplomat
said Friday the ceasefire was "not credible". "The Kremlin
totally lacks credibility and this declaration of a unilateral
ceasefire is not credible," European Union foreign policy chief
Josep Borrell said during a visit to Morocco. Since the invasion
began on February 24 last year, Russia has occupied parts of
eastern and southern Ukraine, but Kyiv has reclaimed swathes of
its territory and this week claimed a New Year's strike that
killed scores of Moscow's troops. The Kremlin said Thursday that
during a telephone conversation with Erdogan, Putin had told the
Turkish leader Moscow was ready for dialogue if Kyiv recognises
"new territorial realities".
He was referring to Russia's claim to have annexed four
regions of Ukraine, including Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and
Kherson regions -- despite not fully controlling them. In
Bakhmut, located in the Donetsk region, dozens of civilians
gathered at a building used as a base for disbursing
humanitarian aid, where volunteers organised a Christmas Eve
celebration less than an hour after the ceasefire was to go into
effect, handing out mandarins, apples and cookies. The streets
of the largely bombed-out city were mostly empty save for
military vehicles. Shelling was lighter on Friday than it had
been in recent days. Pavlo Diachenko, a police officer in
Bakhmut, said he doubted the ceasefire would mean much to the
city's civilians even if it had been respected. "What can a
church holiday mean for them? They are shelling every day and
night and almost every day there are people killed," he said.
Kirill, 76, made his ceasefire appeal "so that Orthodox people
can attend services on Christmas Eve and on the day of the
Nativity of Christ", he said on the church's official website
Thursday. But there was widespread scepticism in the streets of
Kyiv to the gesture. "You can never trust them, never...
Whatever they promise, they don't deliver," said Olena
Fedorenko, a 46-year-old from the war-torn city of Mykolaiv in
southern Ukraine.
- More arms for Ukraine -
Far from the frontline, Moscow resident Tatyana Zakharova
said she was not in a festive mood on the eve of Orthodox
Christmas because her brother was fighting in Ukraine. "Of
course, we will go to church... we will pray first of all for my
brother, our boys," the 35-year-old told AFP. News of Putin's
ceasefire order came as Germany and the United States pledged to
provide additional military aid for Kyiv, with US President Joe
Biden saying the promised equipment comes at a "critical point"
in the war. Washington and Berlin said in a joint statement that
they will respectively provide Kyiv with Bradley and Marder
infantry fighting vehicles. Putin's ceasefire order came a day
after Moscow lifted its reported toll in its worst single
reported loss from a Ukrainian strike to 89 dead. bur/jmm
/ (ANSA-AFP).
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