At the same time, the Russian leader is launching an appeal to Kiev to accept the temporary cessation of the fighting, to allow all the Orthodox to participate in religious ceremonies. A pure “hypocrisy”, replies the Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, who a few hours earlier had also harshly attacked Kirill, judging his request “a cynical trap” and accusing the Church he leads of acting “only as a war propagandist”. “We cannot take them seriously,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba echoed.
If Russia wants a truce, Podolyak insists, it has only one chance to get it: “withdraw from the occupied territories”. But on the contrary, says the secretary of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov, Moscow is preparing for a new escalation in February, when the first anniversary of the conflict will fall. If this were actually the scenario, Erdogan’s new peace initiative would start off decidedly uphill. Speaking of the conversation he had with the Turkish leader, among other things, Zelensky placed the emphasis not so much on a general solution but on specific issues, such as the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the exchange of prisoners and the development of the agreement for the export of grain.
For the Ukrainian president, the good news of the day is new concrete military aid from NATO allies. Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz, during a phone call, agreed to send American and German panzers to Kiev. Berlin also joins the US in supplying effective Patriot missile systems. Meanwhile, while rumors of a possible visit by Putin to Donetsk, Donbass, on the occasion of Christmas, are chasing Russian Telegram channels, civilians continue to die under the bombs. Ukrainian sources report the killing of a couple and their 12-year-old son in a Russian bombing in Berislav, in the Kherson region. In the capital city, the death of a 20-year-old young man is reported, while in the community of Stepnohorsk, in the Zaporizhzhia region, two people are reported dead and three others injured.