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Fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces has continued at a “routine level” into the Orthodox Christmas period, the UK Ministry of Defence says.
In its daily intelligence update, the ministry said that in the fiercely contested area around Kremina town in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk province, fighting was focused in heavily forested terrain to the town’s west, where “combat has devolved to dismounted infantry fighting, often at short range”.
The ministry said:
With the coniferous woodland providing some cover from air observation even in winter, both sides are highly likely struggling to accurately adjust artillery fire.
Russian commanders will highly likely view pressure around Kremina as a threat to the right flank of their Bakhmut sector, which they see as key for enabling any future advance to occupy the remainder of Donetsk Oblast.
In Bakhmut, the heavily contested city in eastern Ukraine, 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 on Friday, handing out mandarins, apples and cookies.
Agence France-Presse reported the streets of the largely bombed-out city were mostly empty, save for military vehicles. Shelling was lighter on Friday than it had been in recent days.
Pavlo Diachenko, a police officer in Bakhmut, said he doubted the ceasefire would mean much to the city’s civilians, even if it had been respected.
What can a church holiday mean for them? They are shelling every day and night and almost every day there are people killed
There was also widespread scepticism of the ceasefire in the streets of Kyiv.
Olena Fedorenko, a 46-year-old from the war-torn city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, said:
You can never trust them, never ... Whatever they promise, they don’t deliver.
A witness in the Russian-occupied regional capital of Donetsk has described outgoing artillery fired from pro-Russian positions on the city’s outskirts after the unilateral truce was meant to take effect.
Reuters reported that the Ukrainian governor of the frontline eastern Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, said that in the first three hours of the purported ceasefire, the Russians had shelled Ukrainian positions 14 times and stormed one settlement three times.
He wrote on the Telegram messaging app:
Orthodox murderers wish you a merry Christmas.
Russia’s defence ministry said its troops began observing the ceasefire from Friday noon, Moscow time (0900 GMT), “along the entire line of contact”, but that Ukraine had kept up shelling populated areas and military positions.
Reuters heard explosions of what Ukrainian troops at the front line described as incoming Russian rocket fire. Ukrainians fired back from tanks.
The Ukrainian troops said it was quieter than many other days because snowy weather had made it hard to fly drones and spot targets.
One soldier, concealing his face with a scarf, said:
The situation today is exactly the same as yesterday, the day before yesterday, last week and last month. There is no point in talking to them, in believing in their promises, orders and decrees.
It was not immediately possible to establish whether there was any reduction in the intensity of fighting at other locations.
Russian forces struck a fire station in southern Ukrainian city of Kherson in an attack that left several people dead or wounded, a top Ukrainian official has said, despite Moscow’s unilateral declaration of a 36-hour ceasefire.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said:
They talk about a ceasefire. This is who we are at war with.
Agence France-Presse also reported that Russia’s defence ministry said it was respecting its unilateral ceasefire and accused Ukraine’s forces of continued shelling.
Putin’s temporary truce order came after ceasefire calls from the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Russia’s spiritual leader, Patriarch Kirill, a staunch Putin supporter.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Adam Fulton and I’ll be with you for the next hour or so.
Leading the latest news at it turns 8.45am in Kyiv, Russian and Ukrainian forces have exchanged artillery fire in Ukraine despite Moscow ordering its troops to pause attacks for a 36-hour ceasefire, which Kyiv rejected as a ploy.
Outgoing and incoming shelling in the Ukrainian frontline city of Bakhmut and elsewhere was heard after the unilateral truce – declared by President Vladimir Putin for Russian Orthodox Christmas – was supposed to have begun on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
Here’s a rundown on other developments:
The US will provide a new weapons aid package for Ukraine and its neighbours worth more than $3.75bn (£3.1bn), the White House has announced, including for the first time several dozen Bradley fighting vehicles. The package includes a $2.85bn drawdown from the Pentagon’s stocks that will be sent directly to Ukraine and $225m in foreign military financing to build the long-term capacity and support the modernisation of Ukraine’s military, the White House said.
The US president, Joe Biden, said Vladimir Putin was “trying to find some oxygen” by floating the ceasefire, noting that the Russian leader did not implement the break on 25 December, which many Orthodox Ukrainians celebrate, or on New Year. Putin’s announcement was likely an information operation intended to damage Ukraine’s reputation, according to US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War.
Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed Russia is set to order the mobilisation of as many as 500,000 conscripts in January in addition to the 300,000 it called up in October. Vadym Skibitsky, Ukraine’s deputy military intelligence chief, said Ukraine believed the conscripts would be part of a string of Russian offensives over the spring and summer in the east and south of the country.
Ukraine will need at least $1.79bn (£1.48bn) to restore its telecommunications sector to prewar levels, according to a United Nations report. Russia has “destroyed completely or seized” networks in parts of Ukraine, and communications infrastructure in more than 10 of the country’s 24 regions have been considerably damaged and destroyed, the Geneva-based International Telecommunication Union said.
English (US)