At noon Moscow time (10 am in Italy) the Christmas ceasefire in military operations in Ukraine announced by Russia officially entered into force, which will last until midnight (10 pm Italian) tomorrow.
Moscow's proposal for a 36-hour truce in Ukraine for Orthodox Christmas is "cynical" and is just Putin's attempt to "gain a shot in the arm": this was stated by US State Department spokesman Ned Price in a press briefing, reported by the Guardian.
"There is no word that can better describe (the truce proposal) than 'cynical'. Our concern (...) is that the Russians seek to exploit any temporary lull in the fighting to rest, recover, regroup and, eventually finish, re-attach," Price said.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Moscow's troops were respecting the unilaterally proclaimed ceasefire since 12 noon Moscow time, while the Ukrainians "continued artillery bombardment of populated areas and positions of the Russian".
This was reported by the Tass agency.
Russian forces have struck the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine following the entry into force of the Christmas truce announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This was stated by the deputy head of the Ukrainian bureau Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
"The occupants attacked the city twice with rockets," he wrote on social media, adding that a residential building was hit, but there were no casualties.
Ukraine has attacked the Donetsk area with artillery fire three times immediately after the entry into force of the unilateral ceasefire declared by Putin for the Orthodox Christmas.
The Tax reports it.
The bombings were carried out with 155 mm artillery supplied by NATO, the mission of the so-called People's Republic of Donetsk at the Joint Control and Coordination Center on Ukrainian war crimes specified on Telegram.
An air alert went off across Ukraine after two fighter jets took off from the Baranovichi base in Belarus.
The population was invited to go to shelters.
This was reported by the Belarusian Gayun monitoring group quoted by UNIAN.
The A-50U radar plane of the Russian Air Force had taken off from Machulyshchy immediately before.
ANSA Agency
Patriarch Kirill calls for a truce for Orthodox Christmas - World
Putin orders Christmas truce. Kiev, 'withdraw'.
A brief lull in the fighting - 36 hours in all - for the Orthodox Christmas, which falls on January 7th.
This is what Vladimir Putin decided unilaterally, appealing to Ukraine to accept the suspension of hostilities.
But Kiev has replied that there will only be a truce when the Russians withdraw, while US President Joe Biden has stated that it is only an attempt by Moscow to gain "some oxygen" to remedy the difficulties of its troops on the ground .
The decision of the Russian president came after, in a telephone conversation in the morning with the Turkish one Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he had essentially rejected the latter's request for a "unilateral ceasefire"
- but longer than the short Christmas period - to favor the search for a negotiated solution to the conflict, for which Ankara once again proposes itself as a mediator.
For the umpteenth time, Putin has said that his country is open to "a serious dialogue", but only if Kiev "satisfies known requests and takes into account the new territorial realities".
In short, if Ukraine gives up insisting on regaining control of all its regions: not only Crimea, but also the four that Moscow annexed last autumn after referendums condemned by the international community and which, among other things, Russian troops only partially control.
And the head of the Kremlin added a controversial note against Western countries, accusing them of playing a "destructive role"
in Ukraine for continuing to arm it and provide it with intelligence information to help its troops locate targets.
A few hours pass and Putin announces that he has ordered Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to implement the Christmas truce, from noon on January 6 to midnight on the 7th, accepting a request to this effect from Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to this effect .
At the same time, the Russian leader is launching an appeal to Kiev to accept the temporary cessation of the fighting, to allow all the Orthodox to participate in religious ceremonies.
A pure "hypocrisy", replies the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, who a few hours earlier had also harshly attacked Kirill, judging his request "a cynical trap"
and accusing the Church he led of acting "only as a war propagandist".
“We cannot take them seriously,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba echoed.
If Russia wants a truce, Podolyak insists, he has only one chance to get it: "withdraw from the occupied territories."
But on the contrary, says the secretary of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov, Moscow is preparing for a new escalation in February, when the first anniversary of the conflict will fall.
If this were actually the scenario, Erdogan's new peace initiative would start off decidedly uphill.
Speaking of the conversation he had with the Turkish leader, among other things, Zelensky placed the emphasis not so much on a general solution but on specific issues,
such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the exchange of prisoners and the development of the grain export agreement.
For the Ukrainian president, the good news of the day is new concrete military aid from NATO allies.
Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz, during a phone call, agreed to send American and German panzers to Kiev.
Berlin also joins the US in supplying effective Patriot missile systems.
Meanwhile, while rumors of a possible visit by Putin to Donetsk, Donbass, on the occasion of Christmas, are chasing Russian Telegram channels, civilians continue to die under the bombs.
Ukrainian sources report the killing of a couple and their 12-year-old son in a Russian bombing in Berislav, in the Kherson region.