The Kremlin said on Wednesday, ahead of the holiday season, that no truce on the ground in Ukraine for Christmas or the New Year is under discussion at this point.
“No proposal has been submitted, no proposal, and this issue is not on the agenda,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the possibility of stopping the fighting in Ukraine.
The Kremlin spokesman also declined to set a date for Vladimir Putin’s annual speech to both houses of the Russian parliament, which does not take place in 2022.
The Russian president had already abandoned his main annual news 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, the senior official of the Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushlin, confirmed in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency that he wanted to go “to liberate Odessa and Chernigov,” two Ukrainian cities located, respectively, in the south and north, far from the current front line.
When asked about these statements, Dmitry Peskov softened them, saying that the priority is “protection of the residents of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions” in eastern Ukraine.
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