WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
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. Kyiv officials dismissed the move but didn’t clarify whether Ukrainian 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 (0900 GMT Friday to 2100 GMT Saturday; 4 a.m. EST Friday to 4 p.m. EST Saturday).
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.
Russia’s Defense Ministry alleged that Ukrainian forces continued to shell its positions, and said its forces returned fire to suppress the attacks. But it wasn’t clear from the statement whether the attacks and return of fire took place before or after the cease-fire took effect.
The ministry’s 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 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 more than 1,000-kilometer (680-mile) front line and elsewhere was unexpected. It came after the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a cease-fire for the Christmas holiday. The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7.
But Ukrainian and Western officials portrayed the announcement as an attempt by Putin to grab the moral high ground, while possibly seeking to snatch 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 (eastern) Donbas (region) for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Thursday.
He didn’t, however, state outright that Kyiv would ignore Putin’s request.
In a Christmas Eve message to the nation, Zelenskyy 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.”
U.S. President Joe Biden has also expressed wariness about the Russian cease-fire, saying it was “interesting” that Putin was ready to bomb hospitals, nurseries and churches in recent weeks on Christmas and New Year’s.
“I think (Putin) is trying to find some oxygen,” Biden said.
U.S. 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.”
The Institute for the Study of War agreed the truce could be a ruse allowing 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.”
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, too, plans to send armored personnel carriers by the end of March.
On the streets of Kyiv, some civilians said Friday that they spoke from bitter experience in doubting Russia’s motives.
“Everybody is preparing (for an attack), because everybody remembers what happened on the new year when there were around 40 Shahed” Iranian drones, said capital resident Vasyl Kuzmenko. “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 to thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the 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.
Ukraine reclaims Kyiv cathedral amid church dispute
** The Ukrainian government has taken the main cathedral of the revered historic monastery from the church previously affiliated with Moscow’s patriarchate and allowed its Ukrainian rival to use it for Orthodox Christmas services.
The move comes as the long-running tensions between the two churches exacerbated amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Minister of Culture Oleksandr Tkachenko said Thursday that the Dormition Cathedral and the Refectory Church of the nearly 1,000-year-old Pechersk Lavra — also known as Monastery of the Caves — in the Ukrainian capital have been taken over by the state after the lease of them held by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) expired on Dec. 31.
On Friday, Tkachenko said that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) — the similarly named rival church — asked for and was granted permission to conduct the service at the cathedral on Saturday when Orthodox Christmas is celebrated.
In 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received recognition from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Moscow’s and most other Orthodox patriarchs refused to accept that designation that formalized a split with the Russian church.
The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which remained loyal to the Moscow patriarch since the 17th century, declared independence from Moscow’s Patriarchate after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The UOC gave Moscow a liturgical cold shoulder by dropping the commemoration of Moscow Patriarch Kirill as its leader in public worship and blessing its own sacramental oil rather than use Moscow’s supply.
But Ukrainian security agencies have claimed that it has maintained close ties with Moscow. They have conducted numerous raids of the church’s holy sites, posting photos of rubles, Russian passports and leaflets with messages from the Moscow patriarch.
Prominent Ukrainian Orthodox Church leaders have rejected the allegations of ties with Moscow, insisting that they have loyally supported Ukraine from the start of the war and that a government crackdown will only hand a propaganda coup to Russia.
Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill, in a video message marking Christmas, called on believers to pray “for our brothers in Ukraine, who are being expelled today from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, that Lavra, which for centuries has been the guardian of true, undistorted Orthodoxy.”
RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE
US set to fight with Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’
The US government’s policies on Ukraine show it is not interested in a peaceful resolution of the conflict, the Russian ambassador to Washington said on Thursday.
In a statement, Anatoly Antonov argued that Washington’s decision to supply Kiev with Bradley Fighting Vehicles only confirms the US has not “even tried to listen”to Russia’s warnings against such “a dangerous course.”
“The US unleashed a real proxy-war against Russia by supporting Nazi criminals in Kiev” as early as 2014, the ambassador said, referring to the coup that ousted the democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich. “Any talk about a ‘defensive nature’ of weapons supplied to Ukraine has long become absurd,” he added.
The envoy claimed Western arms shipments only encourage Ukrainian radicals to commit “terrible deeds,” adding to “their feeling of impunity… They continue to kill civilians in Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions of the Russian Federation in an extremely cynical way.”
“Nobody should still have doubts who bears responsibility for prolonging this conflict,” as all actions by the US administration “indicate a lack of any desire for a political settlement,” Antonov said.
The Russian ambassador highlighted US President Joe Biden’s reaction to the 36-hour truce on Orthodox Christmas announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday. Earlier, the US president dismissed Moscow’s offer, saying: “I’m reluctant to respond to anything that Putin says… I think he’s trying to find some oxygen.”
“All this means that Washington is committed to fighting with us ‘to the last Ukrainian’, while the destiny of people of Ukraine means nothing to the US,” the diplomat argued.
The proposed ceasefire was branded “hypocritical” by Ukrainian officials, with President Vladimir Zelensky calling it a ruse, saying: “Everyone in the world knows how the Kremlin uses ceasefires to continue the war with renewed vigor.”
US to arm Kiev with Sea Sparrows
The US has unveiled a massive new $3.75 billion military aid package for Ukraine, pledging to deliver various weapons to prop up Kiev in the ongoing conflict with Russia. Among other things, the package includes an unspecified number of RIM-7 Sea Sparrow short-range anti-aircraft missiles.
The missiles, developed in the early 1960s, are expected to be fitted onto the Soviet-era Buk launchers remaining in Ukraine’s inventory, Politico reported shortly ahead of the announcement.
“The package will for the first time include radar-guided Sea Sparrow anti-air missiles, which can be launched from the sea or on land to intercept aircraft or cruise missiles. In a bit of battlefield innovation, the Ukrainian military has managed to tweak its existing Soviet-era Buk launchers to fire the Sea Sparrow,”the outlet wrote, citing “two people familiar with the matter.”
Politico did not explain how Kiev came up with this “battlefield innovation,” but given that Ukraine has never been in possession of RIM-7 missiles, fitting US-made munitions onto Soviet-made launchers suggests heavy US involvement in such an upgrade.
The missiles in question had previously been successfully fitted onto the Kub anti-aircraft launchers, the predecessor of the Buk system, in a collaboration between Raytheon and the Polish defense manufacturer WZU Sa. The upgrade to Soviet-made launchers was first unveiled in the early 2010s.
In recent months, Western backers of Kiev have intensified their efforts to bolster Kiev’s anti-aircraft defenses, struggling to deal with a ramped-up bombing campaign against critical Ukrainian infrastructure launched by Moscow in the aftermath of the Crimean Bridge blast.
Recent deliveries to Ukraine have included US-made short-range NASAMS systems, German IRIS-T air defense systems, while at least one battery of the US Patriot system, the backbone of NATO’s anti-aircraft defense, is expected to be transferred to Kiev in the near future.
AP/RT
