[ad_1]
Ukraine said on Monday it had shot down all Russian drones in a new wave of strikes, after Moscow launched an unprecedented third day of airstrikes against civilian targets.
Russian officials were also shocked by reports that many Russian soldiers were killed in an attack on a dormitory in occupied Ukraine along with stockpiles of ammunition. Kyiv and Russian nationalist bloggers say hundreds of Russian soldiers have been killed. Officials stationed in Russia spoke of high casualties without giving numbers.
Russia has appeared in the new year with nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, hundreds of kilometers from the front line. It marked a change in tactics after months when Moscow usually spaced its attacks about a week apart.
After firing dozens of missiles on December 31, Russia launched dozens of Iranian-made Shahed drones on January 1 and January 2. But Kyiv said on Monday that it had shot down all 39 drones in the latest wave, including 22 that were shot down. the capital.
Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko said the latest attack has lost some power and heat.
“There is an emergency power outage in the city,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Earlier, he said one person had been injured by debris from a broken drone that hit roads and destroyed buildings in the capital’s northeast district.
Reuters could not independently verify the information.
Kyiv said the new tactic is a sign of Russian desperation as Ukraine’s ability to defend its airspace has improved.
Russia has been trying to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for months but failed because Ukraine got better defenses, presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Telegram.
“Now they are looking for a route and trying to attack us, but terror tactics will not work. Our sky will be a shield.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Ukrainians for thanking their troops and each other and said Russia’s efforts would be futile.
“Drones, missiles, everything else will not help them,” he said of Russia. “Because we stand united. They are united only by fear.”
Ukraine’s air defense system works at night to shoot down incoming drones and warn communities of impending danger.
“Sounds in the region and in the capital: night drone attacks,” Kyiv Governor Oleksiy Kuleba said.
‘Air defenses are working’
“Russia launched several waves of Shahed drones. Targeting critical infrastructure facilities. Air defense is underway,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russia, which has seized and claimed to have annexed about a fifth of Ukraine, has been conducting massive airstrikes against Ukrainian cities since suffering defeat in the war in the second half of 2022.
It said the attack, which caused heat and power loss to millions in winter, was aimed at reducing Kyiv’s ability to fight. Ukraine says the attack had no military purpose and was aimed at harming civilians, a war crime.
‘Big July’ in Makiivka
Russian nationalist war bloggers seethed with anger on Monday after reports of mass casualties from soldiers living in a dormitory with ammunition at a former vocational school in Makiivka, a twin city of the regional capital of Donetsk in Russia-controlled eastern Ukraine. Unverified footage posted online shows a large building reduced to smoking ruins.
Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Russian official installed in the Moscow-controlled Donetsk region, said the building was hit by a “huge blast” from a US-made rocket on New Year’s Eve just after midnight. According to initial reports, it was being used as a personnel headquarters, he said.
“Some were killed and wounded, the exact number is still unknown,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app. “The building itself was badly damaged.”
Russia’s state news agency TASS said at least 15 people were injured. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said 400 Russians died there “as a result of ‘careless handling of heating devices’.”
Igor Girkin, a former commander of pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine who has emerged as one of Russia’s top nationalist military bloggers, also said the death toll was in the hundreds. Ammunition had been stored in the building, which exploded when the barracks were hit.
Military bloggers weigh in
“What happened in Makiivka is terrible,” wrote Archangel Spetznaz Z, another Russian military blogger with more than 700,000 followers on Telegram.
“Who came up with the idea of putting such a large number of personnel in a building, even if the idiots knew that even if they hit the artillery, many would be injured or killed?”
Sources close to Russia-embedded Donetsk leaders told Reuters that casualty reports were exaggerated and that the death toll appeared to be less than 100.
Ukrainian troops saw in the New Year on the front line in the eastern province of Donetsk. One of the soldiers, 27-year-old Pavlo Pryzhehodskiy, played a song he wrote on the guitar after 12 of his comrades were killed that night.
“It is sad that instead of meeting friends, celebrating and giving gifts, people are forced to seek shelter, some have died” during the New Year holiday, he told Reuters.
“This is a great and unforgivable tragedy.”
In a nearby trench, soldier Oleh Zahrodskiy, 49, said he volunteered after his son was drafted into the reserves. Now, the son is in the hospital, fighting for his life with a brain injury, while the father is on the front lines.
“It’s so hard right now,” she said, holding back tears.
Russia has flattened Ukrainian cities and killed thousands of civilians since Putin ordered the invasion last February, saying Ukraine is an artificial country whose pro-Western outlook threatens Russia’s security.
Ukraine has fought back with Western military support, driving Russian forces from more than half of the territory it captured. In recent weeks, the front lines have been largely static, with thousands of soldiers dying in intense fighting.
In a recorded New Year’s Eve message in front of a group of men in military uniform, Putin vowed not to stop fighting.
“The main thing is the fate of Russia,” Putin said. “Defense of the motherland is our sacred duty to our ancestors and descendants. Morality, historical truth is on our side.”
[ad_2]
Source link