Russian forces pound Kharkiv, as Putin tries to project normalcy

Russia pummeled the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with missiles and drones in the hours leading up to New Year’s Eve, in a brutal assault that contrasted sharply with the sense of normality that President Vladimir Putin of Russia tried to project in his New Year’s address.

Putin’s address skipped any mention of the daily violence of the war, ignoring recent tit-fortat assaults that included the strikes on Kharkiv, as well as a Ukrainian attack on the Russian city of Belgorod that left 24 people dead, Russian officials said. That attack appeared to be the deadliest single strike on Russian soil since Putin’s forces started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“I want to wish every Russian family all the best,” Putin said, in a message that was only four minutes long and delivered in the typical setting for the Russian leader’s end-ofyear address, with the nighttime Kremlin illuminated in the background. “We are one country, one big family.”

The familiar staging evoked a return to business as usual after a striking New Year’s speech a year ago, in which an angry and defiant Putin spoke surrounded by Russian soldiers and attacked the West for “cynically using Ukraine.” This time, Putin only briefly addressed Russian soldiers in his speech, calling them “our heroes” who are “on the front line of the battle for truth and justice.” He did not mention Ukraine or the West.

His relatively calm message appeared to reflect his military’s improved battlefield position compared with the last months of 2022, when Russia’s humiliating retreat in northeast Ukraine precipitated the Kremlin’s unpopular and chaotic military draft. Now, Putin appears confident in his ability to continue waging war, bolstered by the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and by flagging support for Ukraine in the West.

Russia said it pounded Kharkiv from the skies in retaliation for what it said was a deadly Ukrainian air assault Saturday on the Russian city of Belgorod.

Residents of Kharkiv, which is just 60 miles across the border from Belgorod, were jolted by multiple air-raid sirens overnight, as several waves of ballistic missiles and attack drones rained on the city center, injuring nearly 30 people and damaging private homes, hospitals and a hotel, according to Ukrainian officials.

“These are not military facilities, but cafes, residential buildings and offices,” Ihor Terekhov, Kharkiv’s mayor, said in a post on social media that included a video of firefighters trying to extinguish a blaze amid a pile of rubble.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the attacks on Kharkiv “struck decision-making centers and military facilities,” asserting, for instance, that the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, which a missile hit, was housing members of Ukraine’s armed forces and intelligence services. The strike left a hole the length of several stories in the hotel’s facade.

The hotel is one of the most famous in Kharkiv and foreign journalists often stayed there. The attack appeared to be the latest in a series of Russian missile strikes on venues popular with reporters. This past summer, Russian missiles struck a well-known restaurant and a hotel in the eastern cities of Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk.

The weekend air assaults in Ukraine and Russia capped a week of intensified attacks by both sides on land, sea and air, signaling that neither country intends to de-escalate the war. In recent days, Ukraine hit a Russian warship and said it had shot down five fighter jets, while Russian forces made small advances all along the front line.