The Christmas Ceasefire That Never Happened
"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 ceasefire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ."Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu"[Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill's call for a Christmas ceasefire is] a cynical trap and an element of propaganda.""[Russian forces] must leave the occupied territories -- only then will it have a 'temporary truce'.""Keep hypocrisy to yourself."Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak"Shall we believe Russia?""On the one hand they have given their blessing to the war and to kill, and on the other hand they want to to present themselves as saints who are against blood spilling.""But they should be judged by their actions."Svet;ama Zjereva, Kyiv resident
Through the long, cold months of winter Ukrainians can go without heat, struggle with food and water scarcity, because their government is resistant to Russia's kindly intentions to take the country under its avuncular wing and protect it from the horrors of democracy and freedom from the fascist rule of its government. But Uncle Putin has a heart of gold and urges the government of the nation whose land he has violently wrenched into the umbrella of the Russian Federation to be a good sport and stop shelling its vulnerable servicemen.
The government of Ukraine, as unhelpful and unfriendly as always just shrugs its shoulders at the duplicity of an enemy that never hesitates to bomb schools, hospitals, theatres, bomb shelters, nurseries, and yes churches and crowded malls, but on this one day offers the beauty of an opportunity to pray for forgiveness from their sins of recalcitrant obstinacy against Russia. On this day that Russia instructs its ground troops to hold fire.
A unilateral decision, as it happens. Just because Vladimir Putin is such a good fellow, and the holy father, Kirill convinced him it was the (Orthodox) Christian thing to do. Worth a headline here or there. Russia behaving graciously -- offering a country it has raped, a country whose citizens have been strafed, shot at close quarters, bombed, their towns and villages pounded into rubble -- toward an undeserving enemy out of the goodness of its heart.
Patriarch Kirill, one might recall, had no hesitation in justifying the conflict his good friend Putin brought to Ukraine as representing Russia's "metaphysical struggle" in prevention of a liberal ideological encroachment brought to Russia's near-abroad by a scheming, imperialist West whose agenda is the destruction of noble Russia.
On the other hand, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had himself proposed a Russian troop withdrawal before December 25, only to have Russia reject it.
Russia is prepared for serious 'peace talks'; Ukraine is not, given Moscow's rigid preconditions that "Kyiv authorities fulfill the well-known and repeatedly stated demands and recognize new territorial realities". In reference to the need for Ukraine to recognize Crimea as an integral part of Russia, as well as acknowledging other territorial 'gains' produced for Russia by its 'special military operation' that is not a war.
 |
Oh, and that gracious respite from constant shelling by Russia on Ukraine to allow Ukrainian citizens to enjoy their January 7 Orthodox Christmas? Just didn't happen, since Russian shelling resumed with little interruption. What.a.surprise!
Ringing in Christmas with bombs, savagery and death enough to satisfy any raging, frustrated dictator for whom a war has gone miserably wrong with an adversary that fights back.
Labels: Christmas Ceasefire, Russian Invasion of Ukraine
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, January 07, 2023
<< Home