Quote (Goomshill @ Jan 6 2023 05:11am)
All it would take to defuse any 'optics' and mitigate any dissent it would build up with the orthodox christian ukrainians, is to simply accept the christmas truce. Russia doesn't have any control over whether NATO would accept an olive branch and jiggle their puppets accordingly. Instead they're using christmas to crack down on and suppress orthodox churches in the country. Nobody is forcing the germans, americans, british, etc to all put out statements denouncing a call for peace and demand more bloodshed. Pakistan is dripping with scorn as it nominates erdogan for the nobel peace prize for his attempts to mediate this conflict, while joe biden put out a statement accusing russian of dropping bombs 'on december 25th'
I mean I agree, they (Ukrainians) kind of fumbled the optics of this. They are cracking down on Russian tied Orthodox churches because they are labeling them 'agents' which maybe true at some level but to think every random priest in every small town from this denomination is some Russian agent that's trying to brain wash it's town people is retarded. So Russia seeing this just seized the opportunity to further frame them as anti-orthodox with this move.
Like I understand if they rejected this truce because they are pounding and have the Russians on the backfoot and the next 36 hours are crucial, but they're not lol. The war is pretty much at a stale mate currently, in fact the Ukrainians are actually on the backfoot in the Soledar/Backhmut direction so it's not as if this temporary truce would give Russia some advantage. Idk, don't really get the logic.