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On Saturday, a comparatively quiet one in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky celebrated “the non secular independence of our folks” who had been combating invading Russian forces on Orthodox Christmas.
Preventing continued regardless of a 36-hour cease-fire declared unilaterally by Russian President Vladimir Putin to mark the vacation. Moscow and Kyiv have blamed one another for the continued shelling, whereas Ukraine, the US and others have dismissed the cease-fire, which was to begin at midday Friday, as a ploy.
The British Ministry of Protection stated Saturday that combating in Ukraine had continued “at a routine stage,” and the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of protection for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia stated Friday that Putin’s name for a pause in hostilities needs to be taken “with a grain of salt. … This is similar man who stated he wouldn’t invade Ukraine.”
Right here is the most recent on the conflict and its affect throughout the globe.
Theater on the fringe of conflict: Laughs, brutal truths and a Zelensky spoof: The viewers giggles and guffaws throughout “A Play About President Zelensky,” a two-hour vaudeville that has been hailed as one among Poland’s greatest performs of 2022, writes The Washington Publish’s Peter Marks from Krakow.
The erstwhile comic Zelensky is now lionized as an inspirational chief throughout a lot of the globe. Right here, as performed by a compact look-alike named Michal Felek Felczak, he’s additionally the president subsequent door, a determine not above a little bit roasting. Within the play, he spars with a Putin double despatched to taunt him, debates historical past with the ghost of Rasputin and geese for canopy each time an earsplitting bombing raid resounds.
The piece is likely one of the extra robustly satirical entries in Krakow’s annual Divine Comedy Worldwide Theatre Pageant, a bustling, nine-day theater marathon in a rustic that has absorbed hundreds of thousands of refugees from neighboring Ukraine amid the battle.
Mariana Alfaro and Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report.
