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Russia has fired a second massive barrage of the new year on Ukraine’s capital and the country’s second-largest city, with the Ukrainian president calling on allies to accelerate financial and military aid to refill depleting air defences.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said five people were killed and more than 120 injured in Kyiv and Kharkiv after 100 missiles and drones were fired at the two cities. Rescue workers had rushed to locations affected to put out fires and sift through rubble for survivors, he added.
Without directly mentioning delays in US and EU financial and military assistance for 2024, Zelenskyy nudged them to act, especially by providing more critical air defence systems.
“Our air defence warriors have been doing an incredible job for the past three days. Since December 31, Russian monsters have already fired 170 [Iranian] Shahed drones and dozens of missiles of various types. The absolute majority of them targeted civilian infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said.
“I am grateful to all of our partners who are helping us,” he said, calling upon “everyone around the world who values life to bolster our air shield and hold Russia accountable for everything it has done”.
UN officials estimate that nearly 70 Ukrainians have been killed and at least 360 injured due to air strikes across the country since December 29, as Russia has intensified its air campaign nearly two years into its full-scale invasion.
“The enemy repeated a mass strike with various types of air attack, as it happened a few days ago,” said Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, referring to a record nationwide air assault on December 29.
Describing Kyiv as Tuesday’s “main direction of the attack”, Zaluzhny said air defences intercepted 72 of the drones and missiles fired by Russia.
In addition to casualties and damage to buildings, authorities reported disruptions in utilities and telecommunications in the Ukrainian capital.
Air strikes were also reported in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, which was heavily battered by air strikes on Saturday night.
Posting photos on social media of bombed-out residential buildings, the region’s governor Oleg Synegubov said a 91-year-old woman was killed and 44 people injured, including five children, by what he described as a “massive missile attack” that caused fires and damage to infrastructure.
Ukrainian officials said strikes also hit Ukraine’s southern port city of Mykolayiv and Kropyvnytsky, a central provincial capital.
On the Russian side, one person was killed and five injured in a missile attack on the Russian city of Belgorod on Tuesday. “A man was driving a car next to which a shell exploded. He died on the spot,” the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, wrote on his Telegram channel.
President Vladimir Putin on Monday vowed retaliation for Ukraine’s weekend attack on Belgorod, in which 24 civilians were killed, saying that the strike “will not go unpunished”.
Ukraine has blamed Saturday’s Belgorod explosions on the “unprofessional” actions of Russian air defence forces.
The Russian defence ministry said that one of the Russian missiles fired at Ukraine on Monday fell in its own border region of Voronezh and severely damaged several homes.
After early failed attempts to capture Kyiv and Kharkiv, Russia continues to occupy south-eastern regions amounting to 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory.
In a post on social media platform X citing “loud explosions in Kyiv”, US ambassador to Ukraine Bridget A Brink said, “Putin is ringing in 2024 by launching missiles . . . as millions of Ukrainians again take shelter in freezing temperatures.”
“It’s urgent and critical that we support Ukraine now — to stop Putin here,” she added.
Additional reporting by Anastasia Stognei