In July, the Ukrainian president changed the law and took another step in the cultural divide with Russia by bringing forward Christmas to December 25. In a Christmas message published on Sunday evening, Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized that all Ukrainians were now together, Catholics and Orthodox. “We all celebrate Christmas together. On the same date, as a big family, as a nation, as a united country.” The war has no holidays – in a year when Ukrainians celebrated Christmas twice – and Russia continued to attack the country but lost two more fighter planes.
Zelensky said Ukrainians can now “leave behind the Russian legacy” of celebrating Christmas in January. The change is not only part of a broader movement of rejection of Russian culture, but is also explained by the fact that the Orthodox have made a break with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which responds to the Moscow Patriarchate, and whose patriarch, Cyril, was a staunch supporter of Vladimir Putin.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine was founded in 2019 and adopted the date change. “Finally there is a day in Ukraine when my husband and I can spend together in the cathedral and thank God that we are together, alive and in good health,” said Catholic Lesia Shestakova, whose husband, Oleksandr, is Orthodox, to Reuters. . However, the same news agency points out that the faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, affiliated with Moscow, will continue to celebrate Christmas on January 7.
On day 670 of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian defense had no time for celebration. Two fighter jets were shot down, as were 28 of 31 Shahed attack drones and two Russian-launched missiles, according to an air force statement. The unmanned aerial vehicles were launched from Crimea and intercepted in the Odessa, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Kirovohrad and Khmelnytsky regions. During the airstrike, Kiev said, “the enemy also used a Kh-59 guided missile towards Zaporizhia and a Kh-31P anti-radar missile from the Black Sea,” both of which were destroyed.
Regarding the planes it claimed to have shot down, the air force said one Su-34 was hit in the Donetsk region, and the other, a Su-30SM, over the Black Sea. In the span of 48 hours, Russia lost five aircraft: three Su-34s were shot down in the Kherson region.
The spokesperson of the so-called operational zone of Tavria (southern sub-region between the Dnieper and Molochna rivers) said that there are groups of Russian soldiers who are surrendering. “It should be noted that entire groups of Russian soldiers are surrendering. One of the reasons the enemy is doing this is what I would say is an inhumane attitude on the part of their command. “By refusing to participate in senseless attacks or committing other violations. Some officers stripped them naked in the winter cold and imprisoned them in cold ditches, beating them and threatening them with execution,” Oleksandr Shtupun, spokesman for the said group, was quoted as saying. by Ukrinform.
Navalny located
After a period of nearly three weeks during which his whereabouts were unknown, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny found himself in a penal colony in Russia’s far north, his team said. “The lawyer visited him today. Alexei is doing well,” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said about northeast. of Moscow, a region with harsh winters that was the site of some of the harshest Soviet gulags. “It is almost impossible to reach this colony; it is almost impossible to send letters there. This is the highest possible level of isolation in the world,” said Leonid Volkov, former director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and now exiled to Europe.
Navalny had been jailed since early 2021, when he returned to the country after being treated for poisoning, and had disappeared from the radar since early this month. He had to appear at several court hearings. Authorities did not respond to Navalny’s legal team and later cited technical difficulties in organizing a prison-to-court video conference. Finally, his advisers were told that Navalny had been transferred from the penal colony in the Vladimir region, 100 miles from Moscow.
Moscow sees Western finger in Serbia
Russia accused the West of trying to “destabilize” Serbia, where the opposition disputed the results of the parliamentary and municipal elections on the 17th and demonstrators tried to enter the Belgrade municipality.
“It is clear that the West wants to destabilize the situation in the country,” the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy said. Maria Zakharova compared the demonstrations in Serbia to those on Maidan in Kiev, which led to the escape of President Yanukovych in early 2014 and the rise of pro-Westerns in Ukraine.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) reported election irregularities, including election fraud. Following Sunday’s demonstration, nationalist President Aleksandar Vucic said two police officers were seriously injured and 35 people were detained. On Monday the Serbs returned to the streets.
Source: DN
