Ukraine war: Vladimir Putin’s ceasefire order ‘not serious’
A shorterm truce ordered by Vladimir Putin to mark a religious holiday has failed to come into full effect as artillery attacks continue in Ukraine.
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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.
Ukrainian journalist in Bakhmut reporting (I have independently confirmed with other sources as well) that despite Putin's declaration of unilateral cessation of fires for Russian Orthodox Christmas and Russian MoD confirming it, Russian artillery remains active today pic.twitter.com/cwtsJPZaHW
— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) January 6, 2023
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.
RUSSIANS URGED TO ‘WELCOME DEATH’
Vladimir Putin’s top propagandist has urged Russians to welcome death in a bid to drive up enlistment numbers as bodies continue to pile up from the war against the Ukraine.
Vladimir Solovyov — often referred to as Putin’s “voice” — delivered the bizarre rant on his own prime chat show as the nation continues to face backlash.
“Why be afraid of what is inevitable?” he said in the New Year address.
“We’ll go to heaven. Death is the end of one earthly path and the beginning of another. Don’t let fear of death influence decisions.
“It’s only worth living for something you can die for, that’s the way it should be.”
Mr Solovyov went on to question why people would let their fear of death “influence their decisions” after thousands of military aged men fled the country when the youth were urged to sign up and fight in late 2022.
“It’s only worth living for something you can die for, that’s the way it should be,” he told viewers from the TV studio.
His comments come as Russia has acknowledged its worst-ever military losses from a single Ukrainian attack with the death of at least 89 servicemen in Makiivka, eastern Ukraine.
«Жизнь Ñильно переоценена. Зачем боÑÑ‚ÑŒÑÑ Ñ‚Ð¾Ð³Ð¾, что неизбежно? Тем более, мы же в рай попадём!» — Соловьёв
— SVTV NEWS (@svtv_news) January 2, 2023
Ð’ Ñфире роÑÑийÑкого Ñ‚ÐµÐ»ÐµÐ²Ð¸Ð´ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ñ Ð²ÐµÐ´ÑƒÑ‰Ð¸Ð¹ заÑвил, что роÑÑиÑнам не нужно боÑÑ‚ÑŒÑÑ Ñмерти, ведь она — чаÑÑ‚ÑŒ жизни. pic.twitter.com/Lyi9QO2KcH
The the toll climbed in its highest single reported loss from a Ukrainian strike, which under-criticism Moscow blamed on troops using mobile phones, on New Year’s Eve.
In a rare admission, Russia said on Monday that 63 servicemen were killed when a temporary deployment point was struck in Makiivka in a part of eastern Ukraine held by pro-Moscow separatists since 2014.
In the early hours of Wednesday, the ministry said the toll had risen to 89 after more bodies were discovered in the rubble.
The Ukrainian military’s strategic communications unit has said nearly 400 Russian soldiers were killed and even Russian commentators have said the death toll may be far higher than the 89 Russia has reported.
Thousands of people have been killed in Ukraine and millions forced to flee their homes since President Vladimir Putin ordered troops to attack on February 24.
The death toll in Makiivka is the highest reported by the Russian military in a single strike since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia later announced a commission was working to clarify what happened and vowed that “guilty” officials would be punished.
In a video, Lieutenant General Sergei Sevryukov said the tragedy had likely taken place because Russian troops had used cell phones, giving away their location to Ukrainian forces.
But some critics have accused the military of trying to shift the blame. State television military correspondents have accused commanders of incompetence.
The strike also led to rare public displays of grief, including in the Samara region on the Volga River where some of the victims came from.
RUSSIANS REACT TO SOLDIERS KILLED BY UKRAINE STRIKE
On Tuesday, mourners attended a rare public commemoration in Russia where they were encouraged to “avenge” the scores of soldiers killed in the strike.
Some 200 people laid roses and wreaths in a central square in the city of Samara – where some of the servicemen came from – as an Orthodox priest recited a prayer on Tuesday.
At the gathering, Kolotovkina, the wife of a general, said she had asked her husband to “avenge” the victims.
“We will crush the enemy together. We are left with no choice,” she told mourners.
Soldiers also fired a gun salute at the commemoration, where some of the mourners could be seen holding flags for President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.
The operation has sparked outrage among Russian nationalists who have called for military officials to be punished.
“What happened in Makiivka is horrible,” wrote Archangel Spetznaz Z, a Russian military blogger, adding: “Who came up with the idea to place personnel in large numbers in one building, where even a fool understands that even if they hit with artillery, there will be many wounded or dead?”
Russian military correspondents, who have gained influence in recent months, said hundreds could have been killed and accused Russia’s top commanders of not learning from past mistakes.
The outrage has been amplified by reports that many of the victims were reservists who were recently mobilised into the army.
There have also been reports that the servicemen were quartered next to a munitions depot which exploded in the strike and that some had been able to use their Russian mobile phones – giving away their location to Ukrainian forces.
“What conclusions will be drawn? Who will be punished?” Mikhail Matveyev, a member of the Russian parliament representing Samara, wrote on social media.
Sergei Mironov, a Russian politician and former chairman of the Federation Council, also called for criminal consequences for officials who “allowed the concentration of military personnel in an unprotected building” and “all the higher authorities who did not provide the proper level of security.”
The Telegram account Rybar, which has around a million followers, said it was “criminally naive” for the army to store ammunition next to sleeping quarters.
Mr Putin has yet to react to the Makiivka strike, which comes during a holiday season before Orthodox Christmas which many Russians spend with their families.
The defence ministry said the strike was carried out by Himars rocket systems supplied to Ukraine by the United States.
These systems have allowed Ukrainian forces to strike much deeper into Russian-held territory and have been credited for a series of battlefield reversals for Russia in recent months.
Ukraine meanwhile said it had faced waves of Russian drone and missile attacks since New Year’s Eve, mainly targeting energy and other critical infrastructure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday said the army had shot down 80 Iranian-made drones on Sunday and Monday.
But the hardest fighting is going on around the city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine – a location with little strategic importance that Russian forces led by the mercenary group Wagner have been trying to capture for months.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Putin, admitted in an interview that the fighting was tough and claimed that Ukrainian forces had turned “each house into a fortress”.
Prigozhin told Russian news agency Ria-Novosti in the interview on Tuesday that his men were sometimes fighting “several weeks for a single house”.
- With AFP
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