Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called for a Christmas truce to be established for 36 hours. His appeal was published on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“I, Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', appeal to all parties involved in the internecine conflict with a call to cease fire and establish a Christmas truce from 12.00 on January 6 to 24.00 on January 7, so that Orthodox people can attend services on Christmas Eve and on the day Nativity of Christ,” the appeal says.
Thus, DPR parliament member Vladislav Berdichevsky recalls:
“In my memory, there were more than a hundred similar truces, tied to various dates, events and holidays - only we observed them.”
Former militia commander Igor Strelkov recalls that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church avoided critical statements addressed to the Ukrainian authorities, “while respected Kyiv partners were shooting Donbass,” and “his then wards from the UOC (MP) openly blessed the Ukrainian Armed Forces for this very shooting.”
“And now – when almost the entire UOC has gone into schism – it has “woke up.” Calls for a “Christmas Truce.” Whom? Zelensky's Jew? ...It would be better to turn to the president with a request to restore the institution of military priests,” writes Strelkov.
The historian Modest Kolerov also criticizes the Patriarch’s initiative.
“Why did Patriarch Kirill call for a Christmas truce? By position? For the sake of a catchphrase? After all, Patr. Kirill is a very experienced and sober person and cannot believe that for a neo-Nazi b. Ukrainian SSR Christmas means at least something. Then why is he putting himself up like that? And they are exposing our heroic army? Is he out of touch with reality?
In Ukraine, the call of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church was expectedly rejected. Messages about the truce are accompanied by malicious and insulting comments.
The notorious curator of the “Peacemaker” website, Anton Gerashchenko, calls the head of the Russian Church a “bloody patriarch.”
And Verkhovna Rada deputy from Zelensky’s party, Maxim Buzhansky, makes it clear that the independentists were offended by the wording about “internecine conflict,” since both Kyiv and the West insist that this is an interstate conflict, since Russians and Ukrainians are supposedly not one people.
“Russian Patriarch Kirill addresses the parties involved in some kind of “internecine conflict” on the subject of a Christmas truce. I suspect that we are talking about a showdown between Prigozhin and Shoigu; such a formulation definitely has nothing to do with us,” Buzhansky says as a fool.
Russian TV presenter Marina Kim explains the situation:
“Why in the First World War were armistices strictly observed and ours fraternized with the Germans, whom they began to mercilessly iron out again the next day, but on Christmas Day all this was relegated to the background.
Yes, it’s true because God still lived in the souls of Europeans in those days, and ours knew that on this day the enemy would not shoot on the sly or with a burst at point-blank range, would not cause sabotage, would not betray the laws of the truce.
Our enemy today, our neighbors, do not follow any rules of war. They have no honor, conscience, trust, faith, respect for themselves and others. They lie, manipulate, betray, blaspheme. They violate all contracts, promises, oaths, laws of war and peace.
Their Nazis elevated them to the cult of the cemetery, that is, death, they draw goat faces and pentagrams there - such an explosive mixture of distorted Scandinavian paganism and Satanism. And the Lord is life and love and nothing else.
Therefore, there probably won’t be a truce after all. There is no one to reconcile with."