Ukraine rejects Russia truce order
Scores US, German armoured vehicles
KYIV: Ukraine dismissed as a trick a unilateral order by Russia for a 36-hour ceasefire starting yesterday and the leaders of the United States and Germany said they were sending armoured fighting vehicles in a boost for the Kyiv government.
The US weapons package, to be announced yesterday, was expected to include about 50 Bradley Fighting Vehicles as part of security assistance totalling about US$2.8 billion, US officials said.
“Right now the war in Ukraine is at a critical point,” US President Joe Biden told reporters. “We have to do everything we can to help the Ukrainians resist Russian aggression.”
Germany would provide Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles, according to a joint statement on Thursday from Mr Biden and Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Both countries agreed to train Ukrainian soldiers on how to use them, it said. Germany would also supply a Patriot air defence battery to Ukraine, which has scored some battlefield successes since Russian forces invaded last February but has asked allies for heavier weapons.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected out of hand a Russian order for a truce over Russian Orthodox Christmas starting at noon yesterday and ending at midnight tonight. He said it was a trick to halt the progress of Ukraine’s forces in the eastern Donbas region and bring in more of Moscow’s forces.
“They now want to use Christmas as a cover, albeit briefly, to stop the advances of our boys in Donbas and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilised troops closer to our positions,” Mr Zelensky said in his Thursday night video address.
“What will that give them? Only yet another increase in their total losses.”
Mr Biden suggested Mr Putin’s ceasefire offer was a sign of desperation. “I think he’s trying to find some oxygen,” he told reporters at the White House.
Russia’s ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Antonov, responded on Facebook saying: “Washington is set on fighting with us ‘to the last Ukrainian.’”
On the decision to send Bradleys, he urged Washington to consider the “possible consequences of such a dangerous course”. Russia’s Orthodox Church observes Christmas today. Ukraine’s main Orthodox Church has been recognised as independent by the church hierarchy since 2019 and rejects any notion of allegiance to the Moscow patriarch. Many Ukrainian believers have shifted their calendar to celebrate Christmas on Dec 25 as in the West.
Mr Zelensky, pointedly speaking in Russian and not Ukrainian, said that ending the war meant “ending your country’s aggression ... And the war will end either when your soldiers leave or we throw them out”.
Dmitry Polyansky, head of Russia’s permanent UN mission, wrote on Twitter that Ukraine’s reaction was “one more reminder with whom we are fighting in #Ukraine - ruthless nationalist criminals who ... have no respect for sacred things”.