Russia launched a “record” 90 drones in New Year’s Eve attacks on Ukraine that killed several people and left dozens injured, Kyiv officials have said.
Most of the drones involved were downed by its air defences, Ukraine said on Monday. The attacks came just days after Moscow’s deadliest strikes on Ukrainian cities in almost two years of war.
Air strikes continued into New Year’s Day, with Kyiv saying its air defences had intercepted a drone attack on the Ukrainian capital and a missile targeting the central city of Dnipro. Officials said at least two people were killed after a drone hit an apartment building in the northeastern Sumy region.
The mounting attacks and casualties come as both sides settle in for a protracted war after Russia’s full-scale invasion, launched in February 2022, failed to achieve its aims despite the killing or wounding of hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.
Ukraine’s air force said on Sunday that “the whole of Ukraine is on missile strike alert” after Russian MiG-31 jets took off, with “significant activity” recorded in the east and south of the country.
Ukrainian officials reported Russian artillery and air strikes across the country on New Year’s Eve, including the southern city of Kherson, which was liberated in autumn 2022, where a 14-year-old boy was killed and another child and two women were seriously injured.
In other regions, Ukrainian officials reported strikes on power lines, grain storage facilities, pharmacies and office buildings, as well as port infrastructure and residential buildings in the southern Black Sea city of Odesa, where a 15-year-old boy was reported killed.
In Kharkiv region, police said Russian artillery strikes had killed a woman and two men in the village of Borova on Saturday night. The region’s governor Oleg Synegubov said at least six missiles had hit Kharkiv city, with 28 civilians injured in strikes that also hit healthcare buildings and the Kharkiv Palace hotel, which is frequented by media.
Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s minister for internal affairs, said a journalist from the UK was among those injured in the attack. A German team from public broadcaster ZDF was also in the hotel and their translator suffered spinal injuries, the network said.
“On the eve of the new year, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared,” Ihor Terekhov, Kharkiv’s mayor, said in a statement on social media.
Moscow on Sunday described the Kharkiv strikes as retaliation for Ukraine’s alleged attack a day earlier, which it said had killed more than 20 people in Russia’s city of Belgorod, a few kilometres north of the Ukrainian border.
Ukrainian media, citing domestic intelligence sources, reported that the explosions in Belgorod were caused by debris from projectiles falling on the city after being “unprofessionally” intercepted by Russian air defences.
Russian-installed leaders in the occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Monday also accused Kyiv of killing four people and injuring 13 in overnight strikes.
The Kharkiv and Belgorod attacks came after record Russian missile and drone strikes against targets across Ukraine on Friday claimed almost 50 lives, including 28 in Kyiv.
In a Saturday address to the nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian attack had affected “more than 120 of our cities and villages” and he pledged retaliation.
“For every ‘Shahed’ drone, for every Russian missile, there will be a fair responsibility of the terrorist state. Both political and very practical,” he said.
Without directly referring to delayed decisions by the US and EU to approve financial and military assistance for 2024, Zelenskyy said he had discussed with his military chiefs what needed to be done next year.
“Despite everything that will happen in other countries, despite any political changes and moods, we need sufficient potential to do our own thing,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukraine was preparing for increased weapons production in 2024.
In a separate year-end address, Zelenskyy mentioned his forces’ stepped-up long-range strikes on Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula occupied by Russia since 2014, which forced the Russian navy to withdraw to eastern parts of the Black Sea. This allowed Kyiv to break Moscow’s blockade of its ports by unilaterally restarting maritime exports of grain, metals and other commodities.
A long-anticipated counteroffensive this year failed to make significant territorial gains, despite modern weaponry supplied by Kyiv’s western allies. Russia has also failed to win any major land offensive this year, though it continues to occupy about 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory.
Zelenskyy highlighted the positives: “This year, Ukraine did not retreat in any direction on earth, regained the sea and made the sky safer.”
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