Missiles hit Kyiv on Saturday as Russian forces launched airstrikes in Ukraine after president Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised to strengthen his country’s air defenses in the new year.
Most of the attacks were in two areas of the capital, but one damaged the Alfavito hotel in central Kyiv. Across the city, at least one person was killed and eight injured, one Japanese journalist, Kyiv mayor Vitaliy Klitschko wrote in a post on the Telegram application.
“There is damage. Rescuers and medical personnel are going to the scene,” said Klitschko.
Emergency services rushed through the streets of Kyiv after at least seven loud booms were heard overhead as the incoming missile hit the city’s air defense system.
Ukrainian officials also reported Russian missile attacks on Mykolayiv in the south of the country and Khmelnytkskyi in the west.
Many Ukrainians do their last-minute shopping before New Year’s Eve, the country’s biggest festival.
The attack is central to the Kremlin’s war strategy, which seeks to destroy critical infrastructure and undermine Ukrainian morale.
Although they have led to rolling black out – and the state energy company Ukrenergo implemented temporary power cuts across many countries there to reduce the risk of overloading the electricity grid – so far they have not damaged the Ukrainians resolve the problem.
As air raid sirens sounded, two buskers continued to play a classic rendition of “Strangers in the Night” by Kyiv’s Golden Gate national monument.
“The strike is not true. All this is just part of the show for Russian domestic television where others – you, me, Ukraine, the west – are supporting players,” said Alex Kovzhun, a Ukrainian political consultant.
The latest attack comes just days after US president Joe Biden said he had approved the supply of one battery of Patriot missiles to Kyiv to be delivered in a few months. Zelenskyy has long pleaded with US and European allies to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses, which mostly rely on Soviet-era equipment, with more sophisticated systems.
“This year, we didn’t just save our air defense, we made it the strongest,” Zelensky said in an evening speech on Friday. “But in the new year Ukraine’s air defense will become stronger and more efficient.”
Russia has stepped up its use of missiles and drone strikes as its military campaign on the ground has stalled in the face of Ukrainian counterattacks.
In a New Year’s Eve message broadcast from the army corps headquarters of Russia’s southern military district on Saturday, Putin pledged to end the “criminal Nazi regime in Kyiv”.
Much of the talk was in justification of the full-scale invasion launched in Moscow on February 24. Putin, flanked by uniformed soldiers, complained about traitors, western lies, neo-Nazis, plans to divide Russia and the conquest of Russian historical territories ” .
In a separate New Year’s message, defense minister Sergei Shoigu, widely criticized for Russia’s wartime failures, said victory was “inevitable” in 2023.
Ukrainian officials responded by denying it. “This cynical attack on New Year’s Eve shows the disgusting essence of Russia,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak tweeted.
Ukraine’s defense ministry said in a statement: “With each new missile attack on civilian infrastructure, more and more Ukrainians are convinced that it is necessary to fight until the fall of the Putin regime.”