Kremlin-ordered truce is uncertain amid mutual mistrust
KYIV, Ukraine — An uneasy quiet settled over Kyiv on Friday despite air-raid sirens that blared there and across Ukraine shortly after a Russian cease-fire declaration for Orthodox Christmas went into effect. Ukrainian and Western officials have scorned the truce as a ploy.
No explosions were heard in the capital. And reports of sporadic fighting elsewhere in Ukraine could not immediately by confirmed. Clashes there could take hours to become public.
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Kyiv residents ventured out into a light dusting of snow to buy gifts, cakes and groceries for Christmas Eve family celebrations, hours after the cease-fire was to have started.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his forces in Ukraine to observe a unilateral, 36-hour cease-fire. Kyiv officials dismissed the move but didn’t clarify whether Ukrainian troops would follow suit.
The Russian-declared truce in the nearly 11-month war began at noon Friday and was to continue through midnight Saturday Moscow time (0900 GMT Friday to 2100 GMT Saturday; 4 a.m. EST Friday to 4 p.m. EST Saturday).
Air-raid sirens sounded in Kyiv about 40 minutes after the Russian cease-fire was to come into effect. The widely used “Alerts in Ukraine” app, which includes information from emergency services, showed sirens blaring across the country.
Russia’s Defense Ministry alleged that Ukrainian forces continued to shell its positions, and said its forces returned fire to suppress the attacks. But it wasn’t clear from the statement whether the attacks and return of fire took place before or after the cease-fire took effect.
The ministry’s spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, reported multiple Ukrainian attacks in the eastern Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions. It was not possible to verify the claims.
United Nations staffers on the ground in Ukraine “have not seen reports of intense of major fighting,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. But he cautioned that “they’re not everywhere.”
Putin’s announcement Thursday that the Kremlin’s troops would stop fighting along the more than 1,000-kilometer (680-mile) front line and elsewhere was unexpected. It came after the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, proposed a cease-fire for the Christmas holiday. The Orthodox Church, which uses the Julian calendar, celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7.
