He didn’t expect it this Friday night. The President of the Russian Federation attended the Orthodox Christmas Mass – which takes place from January 6 to 7 – at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which we were able to see in a live video broadcast.
No information about his presence had been communicated before Saturday. These religious celebrations are marked this year by a unilateral ceasefire declared on Thursday by Russia in Ukraine. This “truce” was supposed to have started at 12 noon on Friday, an initiative whose sincerity has been questioned by Kyiv.
A “hypocritical” truce
Following a call from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, but also a proposal from Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday asked his army to observe a “ceasefire along the entire line of contact between the parts”.
He had called on the Ukrainian forces to respect this truce to give the possibility to the Orthodox, the majority confession in Ukraine as in Russia, to “attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the day of the Nativity of Christ”. .
However, artillery duels continued on Friday in Bakhmout, the epicenter of fighting in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian authorities deplored shelling in other parts of the country.
Source: BFM TV
