War in Ukraine is going on despite Russian leader Vladimir Putin unilaterally ordering his forces to pause attacks for 36 hours for the Orthodox Christmas.
The brief ceasefire declared by Putin earlier this week was supposed to begin at 0900 GMT Friday and would have been the first full pause since Moscow’s invasion in February 2022.
But AFP journalists heard both outgoing and incoming shelling in the frontline city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine after the time when the Russian ceasefire was supposed to have begun.
Read more: At Christmas, Pope urges end to ‘senseless’ Ukraine war
Moscow’s forces also struck Kramatorsk in the east, the Ukrainian presidential administration said, as well as the frontline town of Kurakhove where residential buildings and a medical facility were damaged.
Putin’s order to stop fighting during the Orthodox Christmas came after Moscow suffered its worst reported loss of life yet, and was followed by a US announcement of more than $3 billion in military aid for Kyiv — its largest single assistance package of the war.
Ceasefire ‘not serious’
Kyrylo Tymoshenko from the Ukraine president’s office earlier said that Moscow’s forces had struck a fire station in southern city of Kherson in an attack that left several people dead or wounded.
“They talk about a ceasefire. This is who we are at war with,” he said.
The head of Ukraine’s Lugansk region meanwhile added that Russian forces had fired 14 times on Kyiv’s position and attempted to storm a settlement held by Ukrainian forces.
Read more: Russia-Ukraine War: Is it going to end anytime soon?
Russia’s defence ministry said however it was respecting its unilateral ceasefire and accused Ukraine’s forces of continued shelling.
Both countries celebrate Orthodox Christmas and the Russian leader’s order came following ceasefire calls from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s spiritual leader Patriarch Kirill, a staunch Putin supporter.
Ukraine had already dismissed the halt — due to last until the end of Saturday (2100 GMT) — as a strategy by Russia to gain time to regroup its forces and bolster its defences following a series of battlefield reversals.
Read more: France to deploy Rafale jets as Ukraine war intensifies
The US State Department said the Russian strikes prove the ceasefire was a “cynical” ploy, while the French foreign ministry described it as a “crude” attempt by Moscow to divert attention from its culpability for the war.
The EU’s most senior diplomat said Friday the ceasefire was “not credible”.
“The Kremlin totally lacks credibility and this declaration of a unilateral ceasefire is not credible,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said during a visit to Morocco.
Since the invasion began on February 24 last year, Russia has occupied parts of eastern and southern Ukraine, but Kyiv has reclaimed swathes of its territory and this week claimed a New Year’s strike that killed scores of Moscow’s troops.
Read more: Russian hackers target U.S. nuclear scientists
In Bakhmut, located in the Donetsk region, dozens of civilians gathered at a building used as a base for disbursing humanitarian aid, where volunteers organised a Christmas Eve celebration less than an hour after the ceasefire was to go into effect, handing out mandarins, apples and cookies.
The streets of the largely bombed-out city were mostly empty save for military vehicles. Shelling was lighter on Friday than it had been in recent days.
Pavlo Diachenko, a police officer in Bakhmut, said he doubted the ceasefire would mean much to the city’s civilians even if it had been respected.
“What can a church holiday mean for them? They are shelling every day and night and almost every day there are people killed,” he said.
Read more: Taliban government signs oil deal with Chinese firm
There was also widespread scepticism of the ceasefire in the streets of Kyiv.
“You can never trust them, never… Whatever they promise, they don’t deliver,” said Olena Fedorenko, a 46-year-old from the war-torn city of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine.
AFP Story with additional input from Global Village Space News Desk.