While the fierce fighting continues in Ukrainian battlefields with no respite for the holiday season, the Kremlin’s propaganda war is intensifying.
Two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to be ready to negotiate a peace treaty, saying “it’s not us who refuse talks, it’s them,” one of his top officials said Tuesday that Ukraine must demilitarize or “the Russian army (will) solve the issue.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s threat seemed to ignore Ukraine’s numerous gains from the counteroffensive it launched in early September – supported by U.S.-supplied weapons – and might be intended to boost the flagging morale of Russian troops.
“The ball is on the side of the (Kyiv) regime and Washington that stands behind its back,” Lavrov told the state Tass news agency about a possible end date to the war. “They may stop senseless resistance at any moment.”
That resistance has allowed Ukraine to reclaim the northeast Kharkiv region as well as Kherson in the south – the only regional capital the Russians had captured. After being driven away from Kherson, the invading forces have been bombing the city from across the Dnipro River. Kherson was targeted 11 times Monday as part of continued shelling of the region by the same name, regional administrator Yaroslav Yanushevich said.
Rather than issue threats, “Russia needs to face the reality,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted.
“Neither total mobilization, nor panicky search for ammo, nor secret contracts with Iran, nor Lavrov’s threats will help,” Podolyak said. “Ukraine will demilitarize the RF (Russian Federation) to the end, oust the invaders from all occupied territories. Wait for the finale silently…”
Other developments:
►Putin signed a decree Tuesday banning oil exports to countries supporting a $60-a-barrel price cap imposed by the U.S. and its allies with the aim of reducing Russia’s ability to fund the war.
►Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is pushing for a peace summit within two months mediated by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres but told The Associated Press he doesn’t expect Russia to participate.
►Moscow said it shot down a Ukrainian drone approaching an air base in the Saratov region, deep inside Russia, the second time the facility in Engels has been targeted this month.
►U.N. human rights investigators said Ukrainian prisoners of war appear to be subjected to torture and other forms of “systematic” mistreatment by Russian forces.
The most intense current fighting is concentrated in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, two of the four provinces Russia illegally claimed to annex in late September, along with Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian forces are trying to encircle the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, but without success.
Heavy battles are also underway around the city of Kreminna in the Luhansk region, governor Serhiy Haidai said. Retaking Kreminna would represent a major victory for Ukraine and a significant step toward its goal of liberating the Luhansk province from Russian control.
Despite all of Russia’s missteps in Ukraine, China is standing firmly behind the Kremlin and pushing further from the U.S.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said his country would “deepen strategic mutual trust and mutually beneficial cooperation” with Russia a week after warships from the two countries held joint naval drills in the East China Sea.
Wang also defended China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and join in the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU, which has led to a growing distancing from China by much of Europe. He blamed the U.S. for the deteriorating relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
Ukrainians and Russians typically celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7 instead of Dec. 25. In yet another repudiation of their invaders, some Orthodox Ukrainians this year opted for the date more traditionally observed around the world — with their church’s blessing.
In October, the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is not aligned with the Russian church and is one of two branches of Orthodox Christianity in the country, agreed to allow the faithful to celebrate on Dec. 25, once a radical notion.
The choice of dates has clear political and religious overtones in a nation with rival Orthodox churches and where slight revisions to rituals can carry potent meaning in a culture war that runs parallel to the war on the battlefield.
For relatives or those killed or held captive in the conflict, it’s not so much the date but their absence that matters. Iryna Latysh’s husband Yevhen was captured by the Russians in the early days of the war and she says Christmas isn’t the same without him.
“We were decorating the Christmas tree together this time last year,” she said while sobbing. “We put the star together, the decorations.”
Contributing: The Associated Press