This is a particularly busy period for airstrikes. After a large series of Russian bombings on Friday – “the most massive” excluding the first days of the war, according to a Ukrainian air force spokesperson – and the attack blamed on Kiev in the city Belgorod on Saturday, which killed twenty-two people and to which Moscow promised a response, Russia targeted the regions of Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia with around fifty drones during the night. 21 of them were shot dead, Ukraine said.
Information to remember
⇒ Russia bombed Kharkiv this Sunday at dawn, in retaliation for the attack blamed on kyiv in Belgorod
⇒ After attacks in this Russian city, Moscow accuses kyiv of a “deliberate act of terrorism”
⇒ Expected speeches from Zelensky and Putin for the New Year
Ukraine: some of the Russian drones launched in the night shot down by the army
Ukraine said this Sunday it had shot down 21 of the 49 drones launched towards its territory overnight, adding that six guided missiles had also targeted the city of Kharkiv, in the North-East, after an unprecedented strike on the Russian city of Belgorod the day before. The Air Force said it had recorded 49 Iranian-made Shahed drones, particularly targeting the regions of Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhia, of which 21 were “destroyed”. It did not say whether the six missiles had hit their target.
Kharkiv bombed in retaliation by Russia
Four Iranian-made “Shahed” drones targeted the city of Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, during the night from Saturday to Sunday, according to the spokesperson for the regional prosecutor, Dmytro Tchoubenko. “As a result of the night attack by Russian drones on Kharkiv, buildings in the city center were damaged. These are not military installations, but cafes, residential buildings and offices,” he said. wrote the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, on Telegram, without mentioning any victims. “On New Year’s Eve, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not afraid,” he added.
This attack comes the day after the strike attributed to the Ukrainian army which, according to the local governor, left 22 dead and 109 injured on Saturday in Belgorod, a Russian town located approximately 80 km north of Kharkiv and 30 km from the border. with Ukraine. This is the deadliest attack on civilians in Russia since the start of the conflict in February 2022. The Russian Defense Ministry assured that it would not go “unpunished”. Ukraine regularly carries out strikes in Russia, particularly in the regions closest to its territory, but their toll is generally much lower.
Belgorod: Moscow accuses kyiv of a “deliberate act of terrorism”
At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council in New York, Moscow accused kyiv of committing “a deliberate act of terrorism” and “using cluster munitions.” It is “a blind and deliberate attack against a civilian target,” said the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vassili Nebenzia, accusing kyiv of having targeted a sports center, an ice rink and a university.
Ukraine’s allies have countered that responsibility for the war lies with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “There are hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. There is not a single Ukrainian soldier in Russia,” British representative Thomas Phipps said. “If Russia wants to blame anyone for Russian deaths in this war, it should start with President Putin,” he added.
The Belgorod attack itself came the day after particularly intense bombings in Ukraine, which killed 40 people, including 17 in the capital kyiv, according to authorities. During the day on Saturday, new Russian strikes targeted Ukrainian territory, killing three people in the regions of Kherson, Zaporizhia and Cherniguiv, according to various local authorities. In Kharkiv, 26 people were injured on Saturday.
Expected speeches from Zelensky and Putin for the New Year
This Sunday, December 31, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky are both due to deliver expected New Year’s speeches, after a year 2023 marked by the failure of Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive and the freezing almost the entire front line.
This news is all the more worrying from kyiv as Western aid is beginning to run out of steam, in Europe as well as in the United States, raising the risk of a drying up of the flow of munitions and funds. On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky launched a new appeal to his allies, assuring that arming Ukraine is “a way to protect lives”.