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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

The Real Message Of Putin’s Bogus Christmas Ceasefire

Vladimir Putin used the Orthodox Christmas holiday as a 36-hour communication ops, while plans proceed to widen his war in Ukraine.

Photo of camouflaged Russian tanks driving through a forest

Russian troops on camouflaged tanks

TASS/ZUMA
Pierre Haski


The announcement of the truce was all properly orchestrated: first a request from the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kiril, famously close to the Kremlin, which was duly and promptly accepted by Vladimir Putin himself.

Russia thus decrees a unilateral ceasefire on Orthodox Christmas, from Friday noon to midnight Saturday (local time).

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It is the first truce since the beginning of the Russian invasion, just over 10 months ago. Yet unfortunately, this should not be seen as the prelude to any significant let up in the fighting.


The conditions for real negotiations do not exist, and if a proof was needed, Vladimir Putin offered it in a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He says he is ready for a “serious dialogue” with Ukraine, he says, only if the authorities in Kyiv “take into account the new territorial realities.” That means they recognize the annexation in 2022 of four regions of Ukraine, plus Crimea that had already been annexed in 2014.

A religiously charged symbol

As you can imagine, Ukraine is not ready to accept these conditions: In his New Year’s message, Volodymyr Zelensky pledged to fight until “total victory,” which means not only the return to the borders of February 23, but to the ones of 1991, Donbas and Crimea included.

The Orthodox Christmas is charged this year with major symbolic weight. The Orthodox Church has experienced a schism between its Russian and Ukrainian branches, and the Patriarchate of Kyiv has given permission to the faithful to celebrate Christmas on December 25, according to the Gregorian calendar, and not on January 7, as the Julian calendar indicates.

But this difference is also very political: December 25 is one more step towards Europe, turning its back on Russia and its influence.

With Patriarch Kirill's blessing

The previous month, 19 monasteries and places of worship in Ukraine, still affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, were raided by Ukrainian security services. They are suspected of supporting the Russian war effort, of forming a sort of “fifth column” in Ukraine.

This showdown is accentuated by the role of Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, who gives his blessing to Putin’s war, while part of the Russian propaganda denounces the Ukrainian leaders as “creatures of Satan.”

This ceasefire is therefore largely about communication. In fact, each side tries to show that it is not responsible for the continuation, and even the escalation of the war.

Photo of Russian President vladimir putin clapping his handsPutin in Moscow on Wednesday

Mikhail Metzel/TASS/ZUMA

More war in the works

Kyiv and Moscow say they are both full of good intentions to negotiate, but each time setting unacceptable requests to the other party.

A 36-hour ceasefire, in other words, does not make peace.

Right now, Ukraine believes it is able to continue its battlefield advantage, especially with the announcements of new deliveries of Western weapons, those from France this week, for example; while Putin is not about to recognize his defeat, and indeed appears to be preparing to widen the mobilization of the war effort.

A 36-hour ceasefire, in other words, does not make peace. On the contrary, more war is in the works, as we approach the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s fateful decision to invade his neighbor.

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Society

The HIV-Positive Ugandans Putting Anti-AIDS Campaign At Risk

“Elite controllers” are those who have HIV but show no symptoms. They’re proving a roadblock to the country’s otherwise promising anti-infection campaign.

The HIV-Positive Ugandans Putting Anti-AIDS Campaign At Risk

A woman in Kampala, Uganda, holds her HIV treatment drugs. The government estimates that about 200,000 Ugandans living with HIV are not taking antiretroviral medication.

Nakisanze Segawa

LWENGO, UGANDA — Ahmed was certain the test result was wrong. It was 2003, and he and his five months-pregnant wife were at a health facility where she was getting a checkup. As staff did for all expectant parents, a worker prodded them to get tested for HIV. Ahmed’s wife tested negative. He did not. “I thought it was impossible, that my results must have been mistakenly switched with another person’s,” he says. That week, he took two more tests. Both confirmed he was infected with the virus that causes AIDS.

Health workers and Ahmed’s four wives begged him to start antiretroviral therapy, a cocktail of medications that prevents the virus from multiplying and reduces a person’s likelihood of spreading HIV and developing AIDS. At the time, Ahmed was in his early 40s; to his family, forgoing treatment seemed like courting a premature death. But he didn’t feel sick — no fever, chills or other symptoms — so he refused. Accepting treatment would have meant accepting a diagnosis he didn’t entirely believe, and the stigma that came with it.

Ahmed lives in Lwengo, a town about 165 kilometers (102 miles) southwest of Kampala, the capital. Amid a sweep of banana, cassava and coffee fields, small, white-roofed houses, and tarmacked roads, HIV is something to hide lest neighbors shun or mock a person as a “walking dead.” (That’s why Ahmed asked to be identified only by his first name.)

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