Russian order for a truce<\/a> over the Orthodox Christmas period, saying the proposed ceasefire is a trick to halt the Ukraine army\u2019s progress in the eastern Donbas region and allow Moscow to bring in more troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRussian President Vladimir Putin ordered a 36-hour ceasefire \u2013 which will run from midday Friday (09:00 GMT) until the end of Saturday (21:00 GMT) \u2013 after a call for a Christmas truce by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the Kremlin said on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTaking into account the appeal of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire regime along the entire line of contact of the parties in Ukraine\u2026\u201d the Kremlin said in a statement citing Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The order did not specify whether the ceasefire would apply to both offensive and defensive operations by Russia, and it was not clear whether Russia would hit back if Ukraine kept fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking pointedly in Russian and addressing the Kremlin and Russians as a whole on Thursday night, Zelenskyy said Moscow had repeatedly ignored Kyiv\u2019s peace plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey now want to use Christmas as a cover, albeit briefly, to stop the advances of our boys in Donbas and bring equipment, ammunition and mobilised troops closer to our positions,\u201d Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Al Jazeera: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has rejected out of hand a Russian order for a truce over the Orthodox Christmas period, saying the proposed ceasefire is a trick to halt the Ukraine army\u2019s progress in the eastern Donbas region and allow Moscow to bring in more troops. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a 36-hour ceasefire \u2013 which will run from midday Friday (09:00 GMT) until the end of Saturday (21:00 GMT) \u2013 after a call for a Christmas truce by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the Kremlin said on Thursday. \u201cTaking into account… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29377,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29378,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29376\/revisions\/29378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}