(Moscow) No Christmas or New Year truce on the ground in Ukraine is under discussion, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, ahead of the holiday season.
“No proposal has been made by anyone, this subject is not on the agenda,” spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, told the press, when asked about the possibility of a pause in the fighting in Ukraine.
The Kremlin spokesman also refused to put forward a date for Vladimir Putin’s annual speech to both houses of the Russian Parliament, which did not take place in 2022.
The Russian president has already given up his major annual press conference without explanation, amid humiliating setbacks in his military campaign in Ukraine in recent months.
Russia has ruled out withdrawing its armed forces from Ukraine and vowed to continue fighting.
On Wednesday, a senior official of the Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, even assured, in an interview with the Ria-Novosti press agency, that he wanted to go “to liberate Odessa and Cherniguiv”, two cities Ukrainians located respectively in the south and north, far from the current front line.
Asked about these remarks, Dmitry Peskov tempered them, saying that the priority was to “protect the people of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions” in eastern Ukraine.