MOSCOW, April 10. /TASS/. Nobody has put forth any initiatives yet on an Easter ceasefire in Ukraine, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, noting that in the past, any truce proposed by Moscow was ignored by Kiev.
"It (the idea of an Easter ceasefire - TASS) has not been proposed by anyone, it has not been put forward," the Kremlin official told reporters on Monday. "So far, there haven't been any initiatives on this matter but our Holy Week has just begun. There have been no such initiatives so far," he reiterated.
However, Peskov urged not to forget that "Moscow has already put forth initiatives [on a ceasefire] and observed it but has been confronted with Kiev’s unwillingness to do the same."
Last week, Leonid Sevastianov, President of the World Union of Russian Old Believers, said, citing a personal conversation with Pope Francis, that the pontiff suggested a two-week ceasefire in the combat zone in Ukraine and the new Russian regions beginning on April 9 for Easter celebrations by Catholics and Russian Orthodoxy. Afterwards, Putin’s press secretary declined to comment on these reports because there had been no direct statements from the Vatican.
Since the onset of Kiev’s military operation in Donbass in 2014, ceasefires have been repeatedly declared on major holidays, including religious ones, within the framework of the Minsk negotiation process. The majority of them were violated by Ukrainian troops in their first hours. Early this year, the Kiev regime did not accept Russia’s proposal of a ceasefire during the Christmas holidays and continued shelling, with Donetsk being under particularly heavy fire.
This year, the Catholic Easter fell on April 9, while the Russian Orthodox Church is celebrating it a week later, on April 16.