Russia's President Putin has announced a unilateral Christmas ceasefire for Ukraine - but Kyiv doesn't want to hear about it. Russian positions are still being shelled, it is said. In addition, after the start of the ceasefire, there is an air alert in Ukraine again.
Despite the one-and-a-half-day ceasefire unilaterally announced by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, renewed fighting broke out in Ukraine. Ukraine, which dismisses the ceasefire on the occasion of Orthodox Christmas as a hypocritical diversionary maneuver by the Russian attackers, said its soldiers had attacked again, especially in the eastern Donetsk region.
"This is how they congratulate the occupiers on the upcoming Christmas!" the Defense Ministry said in Kyiv. In the small town of Bakhmut, Russian positions were fired at with 120 millimeter mortar shells as a "gift".
"The resistance will continue until the last Russian invader on Ukrainian soil is killed!" the statement from Kyiv said. According to Moscow, attacked Russian troops also returned fire. The ceasefire announced unilaterally by Putin from Friday noon Moscow time (10:00 a.m. CET) would have been the first ceasefire along the entire front line since the Russian war of aggression began on February 24 last year.
Despite the ceasefire, the air alert was in effect for the whole of Ukraine for around two hours on Friday. According to media reports, the trigger for this was several Russian planes that had climbed over neighboring Belarus, fueling fears of new attacks.
The Russian military, in turn, accused the Ukrainian side of attacks. Although the Russian army is sticking to the ceasefire, Ukraine has continued to fire artillery at towns and positions, said army spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
Accordingly, there were battles on three front sections. In the north near the small town of Lyman, the Ukrainian military fired with grenade launchers, a little further south near the village of Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region with artillery. There was also artillery fire on Russian positions in the south of the Donetsk region. The Russian troops fired back. "During the return fire, the positions of the Ukrainian forces from which the shots were fired were pinned down," Konashenkov said.
Russia's ex-president Dmitry Medvedev berated Ukrainian politicians for rejecting the ceasefire. "Pigs have no faith or an innate feeling of gratitude. They only understand brute force and squeakingly demand food from their masters," wrote the deputy chief of the Russian Security Council in his Telegram channel.
The 57-year-old also referred to Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in this context. According to Medvedev, the Russian leadership has stretched out the "hand of Christian charity" to the Ukrainians. This was rejected, also because the West did not allow the Christmas peace. "Even the uneducated woman Baerbock and a number of other overseers in the European pigsty managed to grumble about the inadmissibility of a ceasefire," wrote Medvedev.
Putin announced the Christmas ceasefire on Thursday at the request of Moscow Patriarch Kirill. Because of the Christmas festival, it should be valid until midnight from Saturday to Sunday. The Orthodox Churches in Russia and Ukraine traditionally celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on January 7 according to the Julian calendar. However, Kyiv rejects the ceasefire as "hypocrisy". It only serves the Russian army to redeploy its forces. At the Orthodox Easter celebrations in April last year, Moscow rejected a cease-fire on similar grounds.
