Volunteers help to reconstruct a house destroyed during a Russian attack on Dec. 31, 2022, before the start of the Orthodox Christmas, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 6, 2023.Roman Hrytsyna/The Associated Press
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call Thursday for a ceasefire in Ukraine to mark Orthodox Christmas was immediately rejected by Kyiv, which retorted that Moscow should withdraw its troops if it desires an end to hostilities.
It was unclear whether Russian forces would still be bound by Mr. Putin’s order to hold their fire for 36 hours, beginning at noon Friday and lasting all day Saturday, Orthodox Christmas Day. It is the first time Mr. Putin has called for a pause in the fighting since he ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February.
He gave the order for a ceasefire along the almost 1,000-kilometre-long front line after an appeal Thursday from Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Patriarch Kirill is a long-time ally of the Russian President and a staunch supporter of the war. He has repeatedly blessed troops before their deployment to Ukraine and has preached that dying in military service “washes away all sins.”
Tens of thousands of people on both sides have been killed in the 10-month-old war, and millions of Ukrainians have been driven from their homes. Despite successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in recent months, Russia still occupies about 15 per cent of its neighbour’s territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rejected the ceasefire, 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, Mr. Zelenskiy said Moscow had repeatedly ignored Kyiv’s own peace plan.
The war would end, he 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 mobilized troops closer to our positions,” Mr. Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Mr. Zelensky, said earlier that Ukraine would ignore Mr. Putin’s ceasefire decree. Russia “must leave the occupied territories – only then will it have a ‘temporary truce.’ Keep hypocrisy to yourself,” he wrote on Twitter shortly after the Kremlin published the ceasefire order.
Mr. Podolyak also lashed out at Patriarch Kirill, accusing the Russian Orthodox Church of supporting the militarization of Russia and the commission of alleged genocide against Ukrainians. “‘Christmas truce’ is a cynical trap and an element of propaganda,” he wrote.
Orthodox Christianity is the biggest religion in Ukraine, and millions of Ukrainians were once members of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill. The situation helped preserve Russia’s influence over its neighbour after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
However, many Ukrainian Orthodox churches cut their ties to the Moscow Patriarchate after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. Hundreds more switched their allegiance to either the Kyiv Patriarchate or the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine after the start of the full-scale invasion last year.
Russia blames cellphone use by soldiers for deadly strike from Ukraine
Underscoring the break with Moscow, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine recently allowed its congregations to shift their Christmas celebrations from Jan. 7 to Dec. 25 for the first time, symbolically marking the holy day at the same time as Ukraine’s Western allies.
The holidays have so far been anything but peaceful. On Dec. 24, Mr. Putin’s forces shelled a market and a department store in the recently liberated city of Kherson, killing 10 people. On Dec. 31, Russian cruise missiles and explosive drones struck at civilian infrastructure targets around Ukraine, further damaging the country’s battered electricity, water and heating systems in the middle of winter.
On New Year’s Day, Ukrainian missiles struck a temporary barracks in the occupied city of Makiivka, in the Donetsk region, killing at least 89 Russian conscripts. Analysts believe that attack – the largest number of Russian deaths from a single incident acknowledged by the country’s military – may have played into Mr. Putin’s ceasefire offer.
“Putin really does not want a repetition of that on Orthodox Christmas Day,” wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, an expert on Russian politics and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “And we must not forget the noble publicity game: In this war Putin feels like the ‘good guy,’ doing a good deed not only for himself and ‘brotherly peoples’ of Russia and Ukraine, but also for the world, freeing it from American ‘hegemony.’”
Volodymyr Dubovyk, an associate professor of international relations at Odesa Mechnikov University, said Mr. Putin’s ceasefire offer appeared to be aimed at stabilizing the front line and getting Ukraine’s allies to press Mr. Zelensky into making territorial concessions.
“He is trying to send a message of being benevolent, reasonable. This message is not directed to Ukrainians, who know well what he is. It is mostly directed to some in the West, who might use it to say: ‘See, Putin is ready for peace and diplomacy. Why don’t we talk some sense into Ukrainians, so that they will be ready for some concessions?’” Prof. Dubovyk said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke separately with both Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky on Thursday in an attempt to offer his country as a mediator. The Kremlin said Mr. Putin told Mr. Erdogan that Russia was ready for Turkey-brokered talks only if Ukraine accepted “the new territorial realities” – a reference to Moscow’s claim to have annexed five regions of southern and eastern Ukraine.
Mr. Podolyak said the demand was “fully unacceptable.”