Putin orders 36-hour weekend truce in Ukraine, but Kyiv won’t take part
KYIV, Ukraine—russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour cease-fire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orthodox Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-month-old war. Kyiv indicated it wouldn’t follow suit.
Putin did not appear to condition his cease-fire order on Ukraine’s acceptance, and it wasn’t clear whether hostilities would actually pause on the 1,100-kilometer front line or elsewhere. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the Russian move as playing for time to regroup its invasion forces and prepare additional attacks.
At various points during the war that began February 24, Russian authorities have ordered limited, local truces to allow civilian evacuations or other humanitarian purposes. Thursday’s order was the first time Putin has directed his troops to observe a cease-fire throughout Ukraine.
“Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas, we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ,” Putin’s order said.
The order didn’t specify whether it would apply to both offensive and defensive operations. It wasn’t clear, for example, whether Russia would strike back if Ukraine kept fighting.
Ukrainian officials led by Zelenskky dismissed Putin’s moves.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy stopped short of stating his forces would reject Putin’s request to suspend fighting, instead questioning the Russian leadership’s motives.
“Now they want to use Christmas as a cover to stop the advance of our guys in the Donbas for a while and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilized people closer to our positions,” Zelenskyy said. “What will it give? Just another increase in the count of losses.”
Zelenskyy claimed that since he unveiled a peace plan in November, almost 110,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, and he accused the Kremlin of planning the fighting pause “to continue the war with renewed vigor.”
The most comprehensive recent Western estimate of Russia’s military losses was from a senior US military official, who said in November that about 100,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded. Russian authorities haven’t provided any recent figure for their military casualties.
Zelenskyy adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted that Russian forces “must leave the occupied territories—only then will it have a ‘temporary truce.’”
Ukraine’s National Security Council chief Oleksiy Danilov told Ukrainian TV: “We will not negotiate any truces with them.”
He also tweeted: “What does a bunch of little Kremlin devils have to do with the Christian holiday of Christmas? Who will believe an abomination that kills children, fires at maternity homes and tortures prisoners? A cease-fire? Lies and hypocrisy. We will bite you in the singing silence of the Ukrainian night.”