Moscow ends self-proclaimed ceasefire, vows victory in Ukraine

Russia’s overnight bombing of areas in eastern Ukraine killed at least one person, local officials said Friday, after Moscow ended a self-imposed Christmas truce and vowed to push on with the fighting until victory over its neighbor.

President Vladimir Putin ordered on Friday a 36-hour ceasefire along the contact line to observe Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Christmas, which falls on Saturday. Ukraine has rejected a ceasefire, and there is shelling on the front lines.

A 50-year-old man was killed in the northeastern region of Kharkiv as a result of a Russian attack, Oleh Sinehubov, the governor of the region on the Telegram messaging application. The news came a few minutes after midnight in Moscow.

Most Ukrainian Orthodox Christians have traditionally celebrated Christmas on January 7, as have Orthodox Christians in Russia. But this year, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the largest in the country, is also allowed to celebrate December 25. Still, many celebrate the holiday on Saturday, flocking to churches and cathedrals.

‘There will be victory’

The Kremlin said Moscow would press ahead with what it called “special military operations” in Ukraine and Kyiv and what its Western allies called an unprovoked aggression to seize land.

“A task set by the president [Putin] for special military operations will still be fulfilled,” Russian state agency TASS quoted Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kiriyenko, as saying.

“And there will always be victory.”

There is no end in sight to the war, now in its 11th month, which has killed thousands, displaced millions and turned Ukrainian cities into rubble.

Ukrainian officials also reported explosions in what is now the wider Donbas region – the front line of the war where fighting has raged for months.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, said there had been nine missile strikes in the region overnight, including seven in the devastated city of Kramatorsk. According to preliminary information, there were no casualties.

Explosions elsewhere

Explosions were also heard in the city of Zaporizhzhia, the administrative center of the Zaporizhzhia region, local officials said, without giving immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that Russia was planning a major new attack. The Pentagon said on Friday that Putin’s goal of seizing Ukrainian territory had not changed, even as his military continued to come under attack.

There are growing concerns that Belarus – a strong supporter of Moscow – could be used as a staging post to attack Ukraine from the north following increased military activity in the country and the transfer of Russian troops there.

An unofficial Telegram channel monitoring military activity in Belarus reported on Saturday that around 1,400 to 1,600 Russian troops had arrived from Russia in the northeastern city of Vitebsk in Belarus over the past two days.

Reuters could not independently verify the information.