Several hours ago, two posts were made by the Ukrainian SBU-affiliated channel Nikolaevsky Vanek stating that a 72-hour ceasefire had been ordered, starting from midnight on September 5.
He claimed that it had been suddenly ordered in connection with the visit of (de facto) U.S. envoy to Putin Steve Witcoff and U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Jared Kushner to Kyiv on Sunday, who were set to arrive via plane to Boryspil Airport (which would mark the first flight into Ukraine by a foreign official since the beginning of the war).
However, in the hours after these posts, Russia continued launches of Geran-2 drone and Geran-4 jet-drones into Ukrainian airspace, and then carried out a large-scale attack on the city of Kamianske in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast using 8 ballistic missiles. Additionally, reports from other channels indicated that individual Ukrainian units had not received any such orders.
It's not known if an actual order was given or not. It's possible Vanek (who is one of the largest and most influential Telegram channels in Ukraine, probably only second to Trukha), was told to lie and say this to try paint the Russians as unwilling to negotiate, after the GUR received information from western intelligence that Russia intended to launch a ballistic missile attack on Kamianske today. This would make sense considering no other media outlets had reported on this ceasefire before Vanek, and Ukrainian military channels did not report receiving any orders to cease fire.
However, it's also possible that there was indeed a ceasefire order given due to the presence of U.S. envoys in Ukraine, but that Russia chose not to abide by it and continue with their pre-planned attacks as a message that they would accept U.S. officials entering Ukraine by air. This would also make sense, considering Russia carried out drone attacks on a stationary aircraft at Zhulanyi Airport in Kyiv and the office of Oleksandr Poklad, the acting head of the SBU, presumably for signalling purposes.
As of now, this remains an extremely strange situation, with no clear answer.
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