Kiev Snubs Christmas Truce… No Peace or Goodwill From NATO and Its Frankenstein Monster

The United States and its NATO allies do not want any chance of diplomacy and peace breaking out.

Russia’s unilateral truce for the Orthodox Christmas this weekend was rejected out of hand as “cynical propaganda” by the United States, European Union, NATO and the NeoNazi regime in Kiev that they support. Who are the real cynics here?

While Moscow declared on Thursday arrangements for a temporary respite in the conflict, the U.S. and its NATO allies were on the same day announcing plans for a further escalation with the new supply of tanks and more missiles to the Kiev regime.

Reports Friday also indicate the Ukrainian side is continuing to shell the Donbass territory with Western-supplied artillery in spite of the ceasefire being observed by Russian forces.

Washington and Berlin signed off on an agreement to supply light tanks to Ukraine as well as another battery of U.S.-made Patriot missiles. This followed France’s announcement of sending AMX-10 RC armored vehicles, the first time Western powers have committed to the transfer of such armory. After months of rhetoric about “restraint” and “avoiding World War Three”, there are grave signals that the NATO bloc is becoming more directly involved as a party to the war. The supply of fighting vehicles foreshadows the coordination of mechanized infantry by the U.S. and its NATO partners. The alignment is moving beyond a proxy war to direct confrontation with Russia.

One would think that a day of peace commemorating Christ’s Nativity should surely be respected by all sides. After nearly 11 months of constant shelling, one day of silence might be considered a gesture of goodwill. Not so for the NATO-backed Kiev regime which has shown itself more than ever to be a Frankenstein Monster creation.

On January 1, the Ukrainian parliament feted the 114th birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, the fascist collaborator with Nazi Germany whose paramilitary forces participated in the Final Solution genocide that killed millions of Poles, Jews, Slavs, and others. Bandera’s anti-Russian prejudices are openly glorified by the current Ukrainian military command. This is the kind of NeoNazi regime that the United States, European Union and NATO are sponsoring and which the Western news media are covering for. The disgraceful Ukrainian eulogizing of Bandera this week was not reported by any Western media. It is not surprising therefore that such a hateful regime should repudiate a Christmas ceasefire.

Russian Patriarch Kirill had appealed for a cessation of hostilities earlier this week. A unilateral ceasefire was duly decreed by Russian President Vladimir Putin from noon on January 6 until midnight on January 7 in order to give Orthodox believers on both sides of the conflict the opportunity to attend religious ceremonies for the Day of the Nativity on Saturday.

The Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas according to the Julian Calendar, whereas Western Christians venerate December 25 as designated by the Gregorian Calendar.

Immediately, the initiative was roundly rubbished as Russian “propaganda” and “hypocrisy”.

Washington said it was “cynical” of Moscow to declare a ceasefire when hostilities had been conducted on December 25. That shows the parochial ignorance in Washington of the Orthodox calendar. Also, both sides were fighting heavily over the past week. It’s not as if Kiev called for a ceasefire on December 25. Indeed, over the past week, the Ukrainian regime was busy killing civilians with HIMARS artillery supplied by the United States.

Sinister motives were speculated about the truce this weekend. Russia was using it as a chance to regroup its troops and relaunch attacks following the lull, according to Western media and the Kiev regime. That view fails to acknowledge that both sides would benefit from a break in the fighting.

As usual, there were the bumptious and stupid remarks about how the entire war was all Russia’s fault, instigated by Putin’s special military operation that began on February 24 last year. A ceasefire would only be entertained if Russian troops withdraw from all “occupied territories”. That is a totally infeasible solution because it denies the historic roots of the problem, and NATO’s relentless eastwards expansion in particular.

The simplistic and deceitful Western-promoted narrative denies the facts of the eight-year build-up to the war starting from the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and NATO’s weaponizing of the NeoNazi regime that seized power. The killing of ethnic Russians in the Donbass region was perpetrated for eight years with barely a murmur of critical reporting by Western media. In fact, we know now that Western governments were furtively – and cynically – using the Minsk peace deal period for an eventual NATO confrontation with Russia, a confrontation that is now underway.

Ironically, Moscow’s Christmas ceasefire initiative was also deprecated as a public relations stunt aimed at making the Kiev regime and its NATO patrons look bad. Arguably, there is no need for PR gimmickry when the facts alone suffice to tell that the rejection of a truce is self-evidently a bad reflection.

The pity is that a mutual ceasefire could potentially open up further talks for a diplomatic settlement to the conflict – if all the parties were genuinely concerned.

Lamentably, however, it is clear that the United States and its NATO allies do not want any chance of diplomacy and peace breaking out. It was Washington and London that scuppered inchoate talks back in April between Kiev and Moscow facilitated by Turkey. The escalation in supplying heavier weapons as seen this week is a sure sign that the U.S. and its imperialist minions are pushing for an all-out war against Russia. The Ukraine – “fought to the last Ukrainian” – is a mere battlefield in a wider geopolitical war.

Peace on Earth and goodwill to all? There’s no chance of that when the imperative objective is the pursuit of war for bigger, more nefarious reasons. If this were a local conflict between neighboring countries, there would be more international support for a ceasefire. The spiteful spurning of peace is proof of a bigger agenda – the subjugation of Russia.

In any case, we insist on wishing our readers a Happy Christmas. We may refrain from the additional customary greeting of a Peaceful New Year. Because the reality of what the United States and its NATO allies are shaping up to do in Ukraine means that any such wishful greeting would be empty and cynical. We might enjoy a respite this weekend, but the war is set to escalate by those who quite clearly do not want peace in any form.

Original article: https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/01/06/kiev-snubs-christmas-truce-no-peace-or-goodwill-from-nato-and-its-frankenstein-monster/