A new air attack targeted kyiv this Monday, January 2 at dawn, after a New Year’s Day marked by dozens of Russian strikes which left at least four dead in the capital and elsewhere in the country. The Russian army has also declared that it is continuing its offensive in the Donetsk region, in eastern Ukraine, where most of the fighting is currently concentrated.
- Another airstrike on kyiv
“Stay in the shelters!” Sergei Popko, head of the military administration of the city of kyiv, asked this night on Telegram. This administration then reported that “20 aerial targets were shot down”. “The air defense is working… Fragments of balconies and windows of a skyscraper were damaged in the Desnyanskyi district”, in the northeast of the capital, Sergei Popko continued. The alert was lifted nearly three hours later. “The Russians launched several waves of Shahed drones,” said Oelksii Kuleba, head of the Kyiv region’s military administration, referring to the Iranian-made explosive drones. “They are targeting critical infrastructure,” he added. According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, a 19-year-old man was injured by shards of glass in Desnyanskyi district and taken to hospital.
- Strikes over New Year’s weekend
Shortly before and after the transition to 2023, bombings on 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 targeted unmanned aircraft manufacturing facilities.
In central kyiv, a missile ripped through the facade of a hotel on New Year’s Eve, while local police chief Andriy Nebitov posted a photograph on Facebook showing what appeared to be the remains of a a drone with the words “Happy New Year” written in Russian. The Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have shot down 45 Shahed drones overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
Then, on Sunday, “the enemy carried out 35 airstrikes, using in particular the ‘Shahed-136’ drone”, and all the missiles fired by Russia were destroyed, the state announced in the evening. major in the Ukrainian army. “The Russian occupiers”, he added, furthermore “fired 16 times with multiple rocket launchers, in particular at the children’s hospital in Kherson”, a southern city regularly bombarded since it was taken over in the fall by Ukrainian soldiers. The Russians “are losing. Drones, missiles and everything else will not help them. Because we are together”, reacted Sunday evening President Volodymyr Zelensky. “And they won’t take a single year away from Ukraine, they won’t take away our independence. We won’t give them anything. We respond to every Russian strike… on all our cities and communities,” he said. he hammered.
- The Russian army continues its offensive in the Donetsk region
The staff of the Ukrainian forces stressed in this regard on Sunday evening that “the enemy (…) continued to attempt attacks in the Bakhmout sector”, a city in this region which the Russians are seeking to seize. for more than six months, at the cost of heavy losses on both sides and unimaginable destruction.
The soldiers engaged in this battle are subjected to an “incredible fatigue” moral and physical. And in this endless war of attrition, some end up seeing themselves “like meat, just good enough to be sent to death”, explained on the spot to AFP Mark Kouptchenenko, a young Ukrainian military chaplain who will all days at the front. There are no or very few rotations, “they are constantly in combat”, under enormous pressure, subject to orders that sometimes they no longer understand, he said.
- Cardinal Aveline denounces “the frightening cynicism” of Russia
In a prayer for peace on Sunday in Marseille, Cardinal Aveline denounced the “frightening cynicism” of the Russian government in Ukraine such as the repression of Rohingya Muslims in Burma or the tragedy of migrants in the Mediterranean. But Bishop Aveline also made a point of praying for the Russian people “because all peoples, whatever their leaders say, often too corrupt to be clear-sighted, ask for peace and not war”.
