A unilateral 36-hour ceasefire in Ukraine, declared by Vladimir Putin, has come into force. “At noon today, the ceasefire regime came into force on the entire contact line. It will continue until the end of 7 January,” Russia’s state First Channel reported on Friday. Putin’s announcement on Thursday came hours after the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, called for a ceasefire and a Christmas truce in Ukraine. In a statement, the patriarch said he appealed to “all parties involved in the internecine conflict” for the ceasefire, so that “Orthodox people can attend services on Christmas Eve and the day of the Nativity of Christ”.
Despite Putin’s unilateral ceasefire order, the governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region said Russian troops opened fire 14 times during the first three hours of the truce. Russian forces also tried to storm one of the liberated villages during the ceasefire, Serhiy Haidai said.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has rejected the ceasefire over Orthodox Christmas, saying it was a trick to halt the progress of Ukraine’s forces in the eastern Donbas region and bring in more of their own. Speaking pointedly in Russian and addressing both the Kremlin and Russians as a whole on Thursday, he said Moscow had repeatedly ignored Kyiv’s own peace plan.
The war would end, Zelenskiy said, when Russian troops left Ukraine or were thrown out. “They now want to use Christmas as a cover, albeit briefly, to stop the advances of our boys in Donbas and bring equipment, ammunitions and mobilised troops closer to our positions,” he said in his nightly video address. “What will that give them? Only yet another increase in their total losses.” Zelenskiy told Russia the war would “end either when your soldiers leave or we throw them out”.
Hours before the Moscow-declared truce came into effect, Russian forces continued to launch fresh strikes on Ukrainian cities. Shells hit the city of Kramatorsk in the eastern Donetsk region on Friday morning, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president. The city’s mayor, Oleksandr Honcharenko, warned Kramatorsk was “under fire” and urged residents to stay in shelters. Fourteen homes were damaged after rockets hit the residential building, he said.
In the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Russian forces shelled a fire department on Friday morning before the ceasefire came into effect, the regional governor said. One rescue worker was killed and four others were injured, he said. Journalists also reported hearing both outgoing and incoming shelling around the frontline city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
In the occupied Donetsk region, Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian troops of shelling its military positions just as a temporary ceasefire declared by Moscow came into effect. State-run news agency Tass reported that Moscow-installed officials in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic’s wrote in a post on a Telegram channel that “six shells of 155 mm calibre were fired” from “155 mm Nato artillery guns”.
Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, has warned residents in occupied territories not to attend church services for Orthodox Christmas. Russia is planning to launch “terrorist attacks” in churches, she said, without providing evidence, as she urged citizens to “be careful and if possible refrain from visiting places with large crowds”.
The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, visited a military base where Russian troops are stationed, the defence ministry said. During the meeting, he and an unnamed representative from the Russian army discussed the two countries’ joint military drills, it said. The news came as reports emerged that a train carrying troops and equipment from Russia has arrived in Belarus.
The US state department expressed skepticism over Putin’s announced ceasefire, describing it as “cynical” given Moscow’s New Year’s Day attack on Ukraine and saying the US had “little faith” in the announcement’s intentions. Putin’s announcement was likely an information operation intended to damage Ukraine’s reputation, according to the Institute for the Study of War in the US.
Germany plans to send about 40 Marder armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine before the end of this year’s first quarter, according to government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit. A Patriot anti-aircraft missile system from army stocks will also be delivered to Ukraine in the first quarter, he told reporters in Berlin on Friday. It comes after the White House announced that Germany will join the US in supplying an additional Patriot air defence battery to Ukraine after the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and the US president, Joe Biden, spoke by phone. The two leaders “expressed their common determination to continue to provide the necessary financial, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support to Ukraine for as long as needed”, the White House said in a statement.
The US believes that Vladimir Putin’s ally Yevgeny Prigozhin is interested in taking control of salt and gypsum from mines near the Ukrainian-held city of Bakhmut, a White House official said on Thursday. There were indications that monetary motives were driving Russia’s and Prigozhin’s “obsession” with Bakhmut, the official added. Prigozhin is the owner of private Russian military company Wagner Group.
The US has issued new sanctions targeting suppliers of Iranian drones that Washington said have been used to target civilian infrastructure in the war in Ukraine. Sanctions have been imposed on six executives and board members of Qods Aviation Industries (QAI), also known as Light Airplanes Design and Manufacturing Industries, according to a statement by the US treasury department.
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, has told Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that he would consider an invitation to visit Kyiv depending on “various circumstances”. Kishida, who has just taken on the rotating role of the G7 leading economies, reaffirmed Tokyo’s full support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia.
Trusts holding billions of dollars of assets for Roman Abramovich were amended to transfer beneficial ownership to his children shortly before sanctions were imposed on the Russian oligarch. Leaked files seen by the Guardian suggest 10 secretive offshore trusts established to benefit Abramovich were rapidly reorganised in early February 2022, three weeks before the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
