Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president has praised the United States for including tank-killing armored vehicles in its latest multi-billion-dollar military aid package, saying they are “exactly needed” for Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russian forces, even as both sides celebrated Orthodox Christmas on Saturday.
The White House’s announcement on Friday of $3.75 billion in arms and other aid to Ukraine and its European supporters came as Moscow said its troops were watching a brief Orthodox Christmas ceasefire.
Ukrainian officials denounced the unilateral 36-hour pause as a ploy and said it appeared to have been ignored by some of Moscow’s forces as they continued their nearly 11-month invasion. Ukrainian officials reported on Saturday about Russian shelling in the Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions.
Russia’s Defense Ministry insisted on Saturday that its forces along the 1,100-kilometre (684-mile) front line were abiding by the Kremlin-ordered ceasefire, but returned fire when attacked.
The latest U.S. military aid package was the largest yet for Ukraine. For the first time, it included 50 Bradley armored vehicles and 500 armor-piercing rounds that could be fired. Germany also announced that it would supply around 40 Marder armored personnel carriers, and France promised AMX-10 RC wheeled tank destroyers.
The promises made this week sent a powerful signal that Ukraine can count on continued long-term help from the West against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to dismember the country.
In his late-night televised speech on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the US aid package as “very powerful.”
“For the first time we will get Bradley armored vehicles – that’s what we need. New guns and bullets, including high-precision ones, new rockets, new drones. It is current and powerful,” he said.
He thanked US President Joe Biden, US lawmakers and “all Americans who value freedom and know that freedom is worth protecting.”
Orthodox Christmas, celebrated by both Ukrainians and Russians, also emphasized the hostility that the Russian invasion caused between them.
At a revered cathedral in Ukraine’s capital Kiev, for the first time in decades, a Christmas service was held in Ukrainian – instead of Russian – underlining how Ukraine is trying to reject Moscow’s remaining influence over the country’s religious, cultural and economic life. country.
The Ukrainian government took over the administration of the Dormition of Our Lady of Kyiv-Pechersk Cathedral on Thursday from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, and allowed the Ukrainian Church to use it for Christmas services.
The monastery complex is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The cathedral was built around 1,000 years ago and then rebuilt in the 1990s after it was destroyed during World War II.
“This is an incredible moment,” said Alex Fesiak among the hundreds of worshipers who attended. “Previously, this place – on the territory of Ukraine, within Kiev – was associated with Moscow. Now we feel that it is ours, it is Ukrainian. This is part of the Ukrainian nation.”
The Putin-mandated Christmas ceasefire, which began on Friday, was first proposed by the Kremlin-linked head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar and celebrates Christmas on January 7. Putin’s order says the ceasefire will allow believers in combat zones to attend Christmas services.
But Ukrainian officials did not commit to following him and dismissed the move as a Russian ploy to buy time to regroup the struggling invasion forces. Ukrainian and Western officials portrayed the statement as a Russian attempt to assert moral superiority and possibly rob Ukrainian forces of the initiative and momentum on the battlefield in their counter-offensive in recent months.
The break was supposed to end on Saturday evening – at midnight Moscow time, i.e. at 23:00. in Kiev.
The UK Ministry of Defense, a leading provider of military aid to Ukraine, said in its daily briefing on the invasion on Saturday that “fighting continued at a routine level until the Orthodox Christmas season.”
In the fiercely contested Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, the region’s governor, Serhiy Haidai, reported continued Russian shelling and attacks. Posting on Telegram on Friday, Haidai said that in the first three hours of the ceasefire, Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions 14 times and stormed one settlement three times. The claim could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian authorities on Saturday also reported attacks elsewhere in the past 24 hours, although it was unclear whether the fighting took place before or after the start of the ceasefire.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that Russian forces carried out a missile strike and 20 salvos of rockets targeting settlements in the east, north-east and south.
The head of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region said Saturday that two civilians were killed in Russian airstrikes in the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut and in the northern city of Krasnaya Hora.
In the southern region of Kherson, governor Yaroslav Januszewicz said on Saturday that Russian forces fired 39 times on Friday, hitting houses and apartment buildings, as well as a fire station. One person was killed and seven others were injured.
John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, and Elise Morton in London contributed to this report.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
This story has been corrected to show that the Ukrainian government took over the cathedral, not the monastery complex.
