The Ukrainian capital was the target of a new airstrike on Monday morning, after a New Year’s Day marked by dozens of Russian airstrikes that killed at least four people in kyiv and elsewhere in the country.
“Stay in the shelters!” exhorted, on the digital platform Telegram, the leader of the military administration of the city of kyiv, Serguiï Popko, after that administration indicated that “12 air targets in the capital have been destroyed since the air”.
“All emergency services have been activated,” wrote the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitshcko, who denounced the occurrence of explosions in the Desnyanskyi district, in the northeast of the capital, adding that a young man from 19 year old was injured by glass shards and was transported to hospital.
Bombings that took place shortly before and after New Year’s Eve 2023, in kyiv and seven other regions, had already killed at least four people and injured 50, according to Ukrainian authorities.
For its part, Moscow claimed to have attacked manufacturing facilities for ‘drones’ (unmanned aircraft).
In central kyiv, a missile destroyed the facade of a hotel on New Year’s Eve, while local police chief Andriï Nebitov posted a photo on Facebook showing what appears to be the remains of a ‘drone’ with the words “Good year”. written in russian.
The Ukrainian Air Force, for its part, announced that it had shot down, overnight from Saturday to Sunday, 45 Shahed explosive ‘drones’, produced by Iran and launched by Russia, without specifying whether some of them had hit the respective targets. .
Then, throughout the day on Sunday, “the enemy carried out 35 air strikes, using in particular the Shahed-136 ‘drone'”, and all the devices fired by Russia were destroyed, the State announced late in the afternoon. Army Major. ukrainian.
In addition, he added, “the Russian occupiers fired 16 multiple rocket launchers, in particular at the children’s hospital in Kherson,” a southern city regularly shelled since it was retaken last fall by the Ukrainian army.
“The Russians are losing. The ‘drones’, the missiles and everything else will not help them. Because we are united,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reacted on Sunday night.
“And they won’t take a single year from Ukraine, they won’t take away our independence. We won’t give them anything. We will respond to every Russian attack.” […] to all our cities and communities,” he insisted.
Moscow, for its part, assured that it carried out, from Saturday to Sunday, “a long-range precision air strike against Ukrainian defense industry facilities involved in the manufacture of attack ‘drones’ used to carry out attacks. terrorists against Russia. .
The Kremlin often classifies Ukrainian military operations on Russian territory or against Russian infrastructure in Ukraine as “terrorist acts.”
The Russian army also declared that it was continuing its offensive in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, where most of the fighting is currently concentrated.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army stressed on Sunday night, in this regard, that “the enemy […] It continued trying to carry out attacks in the Bakhmut sector”, a city in that region that the Russians have been trying to take for more than six months, with a balance of numerous casualties on both sides and an unimaginable degree of destruction.
The soldiers involved in that battle are in a state of “incredible exhaustion,” physically and emotionally, and, in this war of attrition with no end in sight, some end up seeing themselves as “cannon fodder, good only to be sent to certain death,” said a young Ukrainian military chaplain, quoted by the French news agency AFP, Mark Kuptshenenko, who goes to the front every day.
There are no or practically no rotations, “they are in permanent combat,” under enormous pressure, under orders that they sometimes no longer understand, he said.
On the pro-Russian side, authorities in the separatist territories of eastern Ukraine reported the death of a civilian in Ukrainian shelling on Sunday in Iassinuvata, in the Donetsk region.
According to pro-Russian authorities, Ukrainian forces also attacked Donetsk and the neighboring city of Makiivka shortly after midnight, causing at least 15 injuries.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine has already caused the flight of more than 14 million people -6.5 million internally displaced persons and more than 7.8 million to European countries-, according to the most recent data. of the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
Right now, 17.7 million Ukrainians need humanitarian aid and 9.3 million need food aid and shelter.
The Russian invasion – justified by President Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security – was condemned by the international community in general, which has responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing political and economic sanctions on Ukraine. Russia. .
The UN presented as confirmed since the beginning of the war, which today entered its day 313, 6,884 civilian deaths and 10,947 wounded, stressing that these figures are far below the real ones.
Source: TSF
