Artillery exchanges pounded war-scarred cities in eastern Ukraine yesterday despite Russian leader Vladimir Putin unilaterally ordering his forces to pause attacks for 36 hours for the Orthodox Christmas.
The brief ceasefire declared by Putin earlier this week was supposed to begin at 0900 GMT yesterday and would have been the first full pause since Moscow’s invasion in February 2022.
Reuters journalists at the front line in eastern Ukraine also heard explosions which Ukrainian troops said were incoming Russian rocket fire.
AFP journalists heard both outgoing and incoming shelling in the frontline city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine after the time when the Russian ceasefire was supposed to have begun.
Moscow’s forces also struck Kramatorsk in the east, the Ukrainian presidential administration said, as well as the frontline town of Kurakhove where residential buildings and a medical facility were damaged.
Putin’s order to stop fighting during the Orthodox Christmas came after Moscow suffered its worst reported loss of life in the war and as Ukraine’s allies pledged to send armoured vehicles and a second Patriot air defence battery to aid Kyiv.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko from the Ukraine president’s office earlier said that Moscow’s forces had struck a fire station in southern city of Kherson in an attack that left several people dead or wounded.
“They talk about a ceasefire. This is who we are at war with,” he said.
The head of Ukraine’s Luhansk region meanwhile added that Russian forces had fired 14 times on Kyiv’s position in the regions and attempted to storm a settlement held by Ukrainian forces.
Russia’s defence ministry said however it was respecting its unilateral ceasefire and accused Ukraine’s forces of continued shelling.
Both countries celebrate Orthodox Christmas and the Russian leader’s order came following ceasefire calls from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s spiritual leader Patriarch Kirill, a staunch Putin supporter.
Ukraine had already dismissed the halt as a strategy by Russia to gain time to regroup its forces and bolster its defences following a series of battlefield reversals.
The French foreign ministry described the so-called ceasefire as a “crude” attempt by Russia to divert attention from its culpability for the war.
While the EU’s most senior diplomat said yesterday the ceasefire was “not credible”.
“The Kremlin totally lacks credibility and this declaration of a unilateral ceasefire is not credible,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said during a visit to Morocco.
Since the invasion began on February 24 last year, Russia has occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, but Kyiv has reclaimed swathes of its territory, and this week claimed a New Year’s strike that killed scores of Moscow’s troops.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that during a telephone conversation with Erdogan, Putin had told the Turkish leader Moscow was ready for dialogue if Kyiv recognises “new territorial realities”.
He was referring to Russia’s claim to have annexed four regions of Ukraine, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions – despite not fully controlling them.
In Bakhmut, located in the Donetsk region, dozens of civilians gathered at a building used as a base for disbursing humanitarian aid, where volunteers organised a Christmas Eve celebration less than an hour after the ceasefire was to go into effect, handing out mandarins, apples and cookies.
The streets of the largely bombed-out city were mostly empty save for military vehicles.
Shelling was lighter yesterday than it had been in recent days.
Pro-Russian officials had indicated they would keep fighting if Ukraine does.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in Donetsk, said on Thursday that Putin’s order only covered offensive operations and his forces would hit back if fired upon.