Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a unilateral temporary ceasefire in Ukraine to coincide with the Julian calendar Orthodox Christmas on January 7.

The ceasefire called for a 36-hour period of paused Russian offensives from midday last Friday until midnight on Saturday.

Speaking in Russian in order to appeal to Russia's people, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to the ceasefire suggestion with skepticism and disdain.

In the tree-lined fields bordering battle-ravaged Bakhmut, Ukraine's artillery commanders and soldiers reported business as usual.

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Outgoing Ukraine grad rockets and 155-millimeter artillery shells, incoming Russian artillery were seen and heard.

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.

Russia said the truce was announced for humanitarian purposes so that Orthodox Christians could celebrate Christmas, but Ukraine insisted Russian troops shelled dozens of positions and settlements along the front line on Saturday, when the truce was meant to be in effect.

Russia's Orthodox Church observes Christmas on January 7. The main Orthodox Church in Ukraine has rejected the authority of Moscow, and many Ukrainians have shifted their calendar to celebrate Christmas on December 25, as in the West.

On Tuesday the Kremlin said that Ukraine and the West had reacted "cynically" to the proposed ceasefire.

"We met with a cynical reaction from Kyiv and a number of Western leaders," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a daily briefing.

The fight to gain ground carries on until further notice.