A Russian government spokesperson has said that there will be a truce in the Donbas over the Christmas period, but the combatants in Ukraine seem to know nothing about it.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Dec. 16 that at a meeting in Minsk between Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Russia agreed that there would be a ceasefire Jan. 1-Jan. 7 next year for New Year’s and Orthodox Christmas.
According to Zakharova, the trilateral group discussed “political, security, and humanitarian issues.”
“The contact group agreed on mine clearing in the war zone. A complete cease-fire regime for the period of the New Year and Christmas holidays was also agreed during the meeting,” Zakharova told RIA Novosti.
Largely Orthodox Ukraine and Russia celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, meaning the truce would be declared for the first week of 2016.
Zakharova also said another three-way meeting would take place in Minsk, Belarus before the end of the year.
However, Darka Olifer, spokeswoman for Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma, a senior Ukrainian representative in the group, couldn’t confirm Zakharova’s claims to the Kyiv Post.
‘Stands for peace’
“All I can say is that the Ukrainian side of the Minsk agreements always stands for peace,” Olifer told the Kyiv Post. She said official comments should be sought from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, but the ministry, when contacted, referred the Kyiv Post back to Olifer. She again said she couldn’t confirm Zakharova’s claims.
And the Russian-backed armed groups in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, far from expecting the guns to fall silent over the holidays, say they think Ukraine is preparing to attack them.
In comments to separatist website dnr-news on Dec. 16, Eduard Basurin, a senior self-proclaimed leader of the armed groups that have seized control a part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, said that “there is a possibility that the Ukrainian army will attack before the New Year.”
A separatist website on Dec. 16 posted maps of the conflict showing what it said were concentrations of Ukrainian troops and weapons near the front line. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is tasked with monitoring the withdrawal of heavy weapons from a 30-kilometer wide buffer zone along the front, has not reported any such weapons build-ups by the Ukrainian armed forces.
Meanwhile, the Russian-backed armed groups that have seized control of part of Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast also say they are concerned about an upcoming attack. “The Ukrainian army has started to concentrate weapons near the front line,” a spokesperson for the Luhansk armed groups, Igor Shevchenko, told dnr-news on Dec. 12.
There have not been any reports in the separatist media about the alleged agreement of a Christmas truce.
Other truces broken
A truce was supposed to have come into effect from Feb. 15, 2015, according to the Minsk peace agreements signed on Feb. 12. However, it never took hold. In less than an hour after the truce went into effect, combined Russian-separatist forces attacked and seized control of the towns of Vuhlehirsk and Debaltseve north of the city of Donetsk on Feb. 18.
After a summer of near-continuous low-intensity fighting in the Donbas, the war came to near lull on Sept. 1. However, two months later, fighting resumed as Ukrainian military started to report increased numbers of attacks on its positions, to the levels seen in the summer.
There was a similar attempt to arrange a Christmas truce last year in the Donbas. While the fighting died down around Dec. 31 to Jan. 1, there was soon a resumption of fighting, with three Ukrainian soldiers being killed on Jan. 7, Orthodox Christmas Day. Fighting at Donetsk airport continued through most of the supposed truce, rising in ferocity until the last of the Ukrainian defenders were killed or driven from their positions on Jan. 21.
