War does not take holidays. The front in Ukraine returned to be the scene of fighting this Friday despite the Orthodox Christmas ceasefire proclaimed by surprise by Russian President Vladimir Putin. kyiv had already warned that the only truce it contemplates is the total withdrawal of troops from Moscow and carried out some attacks, while various Kremlin units continued their ongoing operations, such as the bloody offensive in eastern Ukraine around the town of Bakhmut. Even so, Putin’s announcement turned out to be a double-edged sword for his popularity, because by trying to damage the image of kyiv by refusing to ceasefire, he ended up being accused in Russia of selling out his troops with the truce.
Militarist channels supporting the Russian forces admitted that this Friday the assault on the city of Soledar, in the disputed Bakhmut district, in the Donetsk province, continued. “Wagner’s Russian forces [grupo privado de mercenarios] stormed this key Bakhmut settlement on the eve along with other supporting units […]. The main objective of the troops at the moment is to cut off the supply route of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Soledar, encircle the remaining enemy units and, finally, destroy them,” the WarGonzo Telegram channel reported on the actions of the Wagner company. , led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, close to Putin, who recognized the operation around the city.
The Russian leader announced a ceasefire on Thursday between 12:00 Moscow time this Friday (10:00 in mainland Spain) and midnight on Saturday (10:00 in the peninsula) on the occasion of Orthodox Christmas. However, the war has run its course. Barely five hours after the truce began, some social networks close to Wagner announced that they had advanced towards the center of Soledar. “The enemy is withdrawing en masse and our troops are advancing with more force. Our rival has recorded many videos saying that his situation is very bad, and our artillery and our aviation are taking care of him ”, pointed out one of those Telegram channels. kyiv did not confirm the loss of control at Soledar. “We are holding. The boys are trying to maintain the defense,” said a 39-year-old soldier named Viktor at dawn, hours before the truce began, quoted by Reuters.
In addition, Russia “opened fire 14 times” during the first three hours of Putin’s “ceasefire”, according to the governor of Lugansk (also in the east), Serhii Haidai, reported Reuters. Russian forces also tried to storm one of the liberated villages in Lugansk province already during the “Christmas truce,” Haidai wrote on Telegram.
Anti-aircraft alarms sounded again at noon across Ukraine, an hour after the ceasefire began, reports from kyiv Christian Segura. The activation of the alert came after the Ukrainian Air Force confirmed that several Russian bombers had taken off from their bases in Belarus. Every time one of these aircraft goes into action, even if it is only in reconnaissance or training operations and not in attack, Ukraine prepares for an attack. The alert ended just an hour later.
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kyiv was wary of the Kremlin’s promises. And the owner of Wagner, Prigozhin, the so-called Putin’s chef, justified his fears shortly after. “I have repeatedly asked war correspondents not to release information ahead of time. Yes, Wagner’s fighters, exclusively Wagner’s fighters, are close to taking Soledar,” Prigozhin stressed through a statement from his company Concord in a clear dart against the Russian Ministry of Defense for its hesitation.
One of these war correspondents, Boris Rozhin, also said that the fighting “continues as usual.” “The same thing has happened that already happened in the truces previous ones, which only existed on paper and in television statements,” he added on his social networks. Other channels criticized, for their part, that the Russian artillery had reduced its intensity because of the ceasefire.
Ukrainian attacks on Donetsk
The Russian Ministry of Defense assured in its daily report that before the ceasefire it had launched a large number of attacks against the Ukrainian forces, although it assured that it had complied with the truce from minute one “along the entire line of contact”. , something that was the subject of criticism within Russia because, at the same time, Moscow regretted that kyiv continued to “bomb Russian settlements and troop positions.”
A comment from one of the military most critical of the Kremlin, Igor Girkin, alias Strelkov, went viral for his acidity against the decision of the Russian president. “At exactly 12:00, the respectable associates in kyiv of Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] demonstrated their one-sided joy by inflicting an artillery attack on Donetsk with 152 and 155-millimeter caliber shells.”
The Ukrainian government also denounced that Russia had broken its own ceasefire. “Air alert over Ukraine. The children are back in the cold bomb shelters. A fire station has been bombed in Kherson. This is the essence of the Russian truce: kill from behind, imitate silence.” stated on Twitter Adviser to the Ukrainian President Mikhailo Podoliak.
The beginning of Orthodox Christmas was also marked by the memory of the death last New Year’s Eve in Makiivka of a huge group of recently mobilized recruits. The Governorate of the Samara region, where many of the victims came from, reported that 45 injured were transferred this Friday to a hospital in the Rostov province. In the video released by the authorities, only several recruits were seen getting off the plane under their own power. According to official figures, 89 Russians died in the Ukrainian bombing of a building on New Year’s Eve, although some Russian media speak of many more victims, dead and injured.
On the other hand, the delivery of a new package of Western weapons to Ukraine worries the Kremlin. The Russian embassy in Germany “strongly” condemned the shipment by Berlin of several Marder armored personnel carriers and a Patriot anti-aircraft battery, weapons that will be added to the supply of American Bradley tanks. Moscow, as it had done months before, turned to the past to put pressure on the government of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz. “It is a moral line that the German authorities should not have crossed taking into account the historical responsibility of Germany,” said the diplomatic mission when resorting, once again, to Nazism and World War II to justify their actions today.
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