Russia has ruled out a Christmas “ceasefire” after nearly 10 months of war in Ukraine and rejected kyiv’s call to start withdrawing troops before Christmas as a move to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two.
Russia and Ukraine have not entered into talks to end the fighting, which is taking place in the east and south of the country with little movement on either side.
kyiv felt the violence again on Wednesday, with the first major drone attack on the Ukrainian capital in weeks. Two administrative buildings were hit, but air defenses largely repelled the attack. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 13 drones had been shot down.
In a kyiv district where snow covered the ground, residents said they heard the loud hum of an Iranian Shahed drone’s engine followed by a powerful explosion in a building near their homes.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions displaced and cities reduced to rubble since Russia invaded its neighboring country on February 24, claiming it needed to protect Russian-speakers from far-right Ukrainian nationalists. kyiv and its allies describe it as an unprovoked war.
“There is no calm on the front line,” Zelensky said in a regular evening video address, in which he described Russia’s destruction of cities in the east with artillery “so that only ruins and craters remain.”
Asked on Wednesday whether Moscow had seen proposals for a “Christmas ceasefire,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters: “No, no such offers have been received from anyone. This issue is not on the agenda. “.
Zelensky said this week that Russia should start withdrawing before Christmas as a step towards ending the conflict, but Moscow rejected the proposal, saying Ukraine must accept the loss of territory to Russia before any negotiations can move forward.
“Given what we are seeing in the air and on the ground in Ukraine, it is difficult to conclude that this war will be over by the end of the year,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said in response to a question. He asked about the prospects for a negotiated peace.
Russia, calling the war a “special military operation”, has fired barrages of missiles at energy infrastructure since October, knocking out power and leaving Ukrainians without heat in frigid winter conditions.
In a move that would significantly strengthen Ukraine’s air defense, US sources told Reuters this week that the decision to supply the Patriot missile system to the Ukrainian military could be announced as early as Thursday.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the United States also plans to send devices that turn unguided aerial munitions into smart bombs, allowing for a high degree of precision aiming.
The Kremlin said US Patriot systems would be legitimate targets and warned that Washington was getting “deeper and deeper into the post-Soviet republic conflict.”
CHILDREN TAKEN TO RUSSIA
Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights, stated that 12,000 Ukrainian children had been transferred to Russia since the start of the invasion in February, 8,600 of them by force.
He said Ukrainian investigators had discovered a cell where Russian troops detained and mistreated children in Kherson, a southern city abandoned by pro-Moscow forces last month.
Lubinets did not provide evidence for his claims and Reuters could not immediately confirm his account. Russia denies attacking civilians and rejects war crimes charges.