Talk:2023 Russian Christmas truce proposal

Length and claims of violations

Meduza stated: According to the announcement, the ceasefire will be in effect from noon on January 6 until midnight on January 7. The last datum of midnight on January 7 is a potential source of confusion: does it mean 7 January has just begun, or just ended (i.e. "24:00, 7 January")? Under the former interpretation, the ceasefire was to last 12 hours, under the latter 36 hours. The latter interpretation makes most sense as Orthodox Christmas – at least in the Russian Orthodox Church – is currently celebrated on 7 January. The Guardian follows the 36-hour truce interpretation by writing: “Taking into account the appeal of his holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the minister of defence of the Russian Federation to introduce a ceasefire regime along the entire line of contact of the parties in Ukraine from 12.00 on 6 January 2023 to 24.00 on 7 January 2023,” Putin’s order, addressed to Shoigu and published on the Kremlin’s website, stated.

As it is a Russian government announcement, I suppose we are to interpret this in Moscow Time (UTC+3), which would result in:

• 9:00, 6 January 2023 UTC – 21:00, 7 January 2023 UTC.
• 11:00, 6 January 2023 Kyiv Time – 23:00, 7 January 2023 Kyiv Time.
• 12:00, 6 January 2023 Moscow Time – 24:00, 7 January 2023 / 00:00, 8 January 2023 Moscow Time.

If we are to fact-check the claims by Ukrainian authorities that Russian forces have indeed violated their own unilateral self-declared ceasefire, we will need to investigate whether the reported attacks, deaths and injuries occurred after 9:00, 6 January 2023 UTC / 11:00, 6 January 2023 Kyiv Time / 12:00, 6 January 2023 Moscow Time. We should keep in mind that Ukrainian authorities are extremely likely to use Kyiv Time. So if an attack is reported to have happened between 11:00 and 12:00 on 6 January, it would be a violation under Kyiv Time, but not under Moscow Time; but if Ukrainian authorities report it, they are probably under Kyiv time. To be clear, the statements by the governors of Kherson and Donetsk Oblast do not indicate an exact time. Both Yanushevich and Kyrylenko made a general statement of everything that happened on 6 January (which, presumably under Kyiv Time, is equivalent to 22:00, 5 January 2023 UTC – 22:00, 6 January 2023 UTC), without distinguishing between before and after 9:00, 6 January UTC. Any reliable sources to further clear this up would be warranted. I find it plausible that the governors' claims of attacks, deaths and injuries also refer to events of the entire day, including before and after the supposed start of the ceasefire, but at the moment we do not know. They do not mention the ceasefire, let alone that it has been violated. However, the claim that the ceasefire has been violated is made by The Guardian and the NOS in part on the basis of the governors' statements, which therefore may or may not be correct, as they might be moving the goalposts here. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:20, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

The Guardian liveblog added some statements:

• Agence France-Presse reported that war-scarred cities in eastern Ukraine saw no significant let-up in the combat. Heavy artillery fire was heard in the town of Chasiv Yar, south of the frontline city of Bakhmut, throughout much of Saturday morning. That clearly happened during the supposed ceasefire, but doesn't say who operated that artillery; if Ukraine (which said it wouldn't observe the ceasefire) was the only one, Russian forces didn't violate it, although that seems somewhat unlikely.
• The Russian defence ministry insisted its forces were observing the unilateral ceasefire, which ended at 11pm in Kyiv (2100 GMT). But they also said they had repelled attacks in eastern Ukraine and killed dozens of Ukrainian soldiers on Friday. The problem is of course that Friday is too vague, and could refer to events before 12:00, 6 January Moscow Time. (Edit: And if it were true that 'dozens of Ukrainian soldiers were killed' during the ceasefire, the Ukrainian authorities would have had an incentive to report it as a ceasefire violation (despite their otherwise reluctance to report military deaths), but so far I haven't seen any such reports. So either (a) they occurred before the ceasefire, (b) they didn't happen (and the Russian Defence Ministry lied/exaggerated), or (c) the Ukrainian authories decided to keep these military deaths during the ceasefire secret as part of their overall radio silence on military deaths, even if they could have been valuable in the information war to accuse Russia of hypocrisy in violating their own self-declared unilateral ceasefire. I don't know which one of these scenarios is most likely, so sadly this little statement from The Guardian does not give us enough evidence yet of the Russian authorities essentially admitting they violated their own ceasefire.)
• Ukrainian authorities said only three people had been killed on Friday. That's essentially a repetition of what Yanushevich and Kyrylenko said on Telegram, and does not allow us to fact-check whether they were killed before or after 9:00, 6 January UTC.

Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 11:49, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Reuters' Villarraga report on Russian and Ukrainian forces exchanging artillery fire near Kreminna from January 6, 2023 11:38 PM GMT+1 (i.e. 22:38, 6 January UTC) is the best evidence I've seen so far.

• on Friday, even after Moscow said it had ordered its troops to stop shooting for a unilateral truce that was firmly rejected by Kyiv. (...) Reuters heard explosions of what Ukrainian troops at the front line [mear Kreminna] described as incoming Russian rocket fire. Ukrainians fired back from tanks. This is pretty clear direct evidence.
• One witness in the Russian-occupied regional capital Donetsk also described outgoing artillery fired from pro-Russian positions on the city's outskirts after the truce was meant to take effect. This is indirect evidence.
• The Ukrainian governor of the front line eastern Luhansk province, Serhiy Haidai, said that in the first three hours of the purported ceasefire the Russians had shelled Ukrainian positions 14 times and stormed one settlement three times. "Orthodox murderers wish you a merry Christmas," he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. This will have to be verified.

This appears to be Haidai's Telegram post in question.

• Briefly about the 3 hours of Putin's "Christmas truce" in Luhansk region. From 12:00 to 15:00: ❗️The Rashists fired artillery 14 times and stormed one of our settlements three times. People in de-occupied villages sit in basements all day. Orthodox murderers wish you a Merry Christmas. It has a timestamp of Jan 6 at 16:28, but I'm not sure which timezone that corresponds to. UTC, mine (UTC+1), Kyiv (UTC+2) or Moscow (UTC+3), but even under the Moscow Time interpretation, Haidai posted this 1h 28 minutes after the period of time he is referring to. From 12:00 to 15:00 appears to be following Moscow Time, because Haidai refers to the 3 hours of Putin's "Christmas truce". At any rate, regardless of whether Haidai follows Kyiv or Moscow Time, all of these would be ceasefire violations by the Russian forces if true (under Kyiv Time interpretation, they just happened in the 2nd to 4th hour of the ceasefire rather than the first 3 hours).

Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 12:14, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

The 7 January BBC article by Fouché does not appear to be the most reliable, as it lacks any sort of timestamps. It claims/implies the Kramatorsk residential building attack and the Kherson city fire station attack happened after the cease, but Reuters claimed that both these incidents happened early on Friday, shortly before the ceasefire was set to commence. According to the lectio difficilior potior principle, I regard Reuters as more likely to be accurate (also because they at least had a journalist on the ground in Kreminna), but we shall see if other sources can corroborate the matter. The BBC doesn't say when Sovsun made her statement, so it is difficult to verify her claims. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

A similar tweet of Sovsun's from 11:19 UTC stated: So, two hours into the announced ceasefire, air raid sirens are blaring all over #Ukraine. Like literally, he couldn't even hold it for two hours. That's how much one can trust #Putin. I suppose the BBC contacted her shortly after, and she told them a similar thing, by which time it was already 2.5 hours. Chronologically, it would appear to be correct. On the other hand, just because Ukrainian air raid sirens went off doesn't necessarily mean Russian forces were firing at them, and it could be staged, but that would be quite cynical for Ukrainian authorities to do, and crying wolf isn't in the civilians' long-term interests. And if so, that couldn't be kept a secret by all those involved in activating the sires across Ukraine; a conspiracy cannot be kept secret for long if it involves more than 5 people. Besides, we've got reports from Reuters, AFP, The Guardian and others that Russian forces have fired during the 36-hour period, so it's only reasonable to active the air raid sirens. Therefore, I think Sovsun's claim is a relevant and plausible statement. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Notability

Hello @Volunteer Marek: could you explainwhy, in your view, the subject of this article may not meet WP:GNG? I would say it passes WP:SIGCOV, for example. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 01:25, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOTNEWS etc. do you really think this will be getting coverage in a year? Or even a week or two? Volunteer Marek 01:30, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

How should I know? WP:CRYSTAL. All I can say is that it has received WP:SIGCOV in WP:RS, and a lot of them have been cited in this article already, and there are many more out there. ISW stated that the purported ceasefire had significance for the information war, and that seems correct, although it appears to have backfired amongst many pro-war Russian officials, milbloggers and commentarors. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 01:46, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Agree with @Nederlandse Leeuw. It is a small event in the scheme of everything, but it appears to have received SIGCOV. Wether it's covered in a year from now is not really relevant per WP:NTEMP. However, I don't know that an unsuccessful unilateral proposal really should have its own article. WP:PAGEDECIDE says this is somewhat discretionary, but I think the best thing to do would be to fold this into the larger article on the topic. -- Lenny Marks (talk) 10:46, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I say it is notable. And in the case it isn't, we could merge it with Easter truce into something like Truce proposals during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. But this information is useful. Super Ψ Dro 11:38, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Agree with SuperDro. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 13:53, 14 January 2023 (UTC)