Kyiv hit by Russian air attack; 45 Iranian-made Shahed drones shot down on first night of the new year, Zelenskiy says
Kyiv was hit by an “air attack” early on Monday with debris from a destroyed drone wounding one, the city’s mayor has said. Air raid sirens were announced just before midnight and explosions were reported in the capital’s northeastern Desnianskiy district with a 19-year-old man taken to hospital. The city military administration reported that 12 aerial targets were shot down by Ukraine’s air defence over Monday night.
Ukraine’s regional military command in the country’s east said air defence systems destroyed nine Iranian-made Shahed drones over the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions by the early hours of Monday. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy added that “45 ‘Shaheds’ were shot down on the first night of the year,” in his Monday evening address.
Ukraine’s most senior defence officials have said they believe Russia will attempt a second invasion from the north in the next couple of months, using troops who have been training for the past three months since being mobilised in October. But the Ukrainian forces defending the border say the Russians will not be able to break through as they did in February, when the Sumy region had no defensive lines. Both Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, have named February as a possible period for attempted re-invasion.
Russia has claimed Ukraine’s forces shelled the city of Makiivka and other areas in the Donetsk region of Ukraine of which it occupies. The Moscow-installed administration of the Donetsk region said on Sunday that at least 25 rockets were fired at the region overnight on New Year’s Eve with reports saying that military quarters were hit, killing many. Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Russian-backed official in the region, said that there was a “massive blow” on a vocational school, which according to preliminary information served as military personnel quarters. “There were dead and wounded, the exact number is still unknown,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app.
Zelenskiy said his only wish for Ukrainians for 2023 was for victory as he resolved to stay the course. “I want to wish all of us one thing – victory,” he said in a video message shortly before midnight on Saturday. Zelenskiy reiterated that he would stay with his people while they were fighting for freedom. “We were told to surrender. We chose a counterattack,” he said. “We are ready to fight for it [freedom]. That’s why each of us is here. I’m here, we are here, you are here, everyone is here. We are all Ukraine.”
Russia claimed its strikes against Ukraine on New Year’s Eve – including the launch of more than 20 cruise missiles that killed at least three people – were targeting its neighbour’s drone production. A children’s hospital was among the buildings said to have been hit by Russian shelling. Ukrainian officials claim Russia is deliberately targeting civilians to sow fear.
Russian leaders issued a series of defiant messages ahead of the new year. President Vladimir Putin said Russia would “never give in” to the west, and was fighting for its “motherland, truth and justice … so that Russia’s security can be guaranteed”.
