San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
RUSSIAN STRIKES POUND KYIV, OTHER UKRAINIAN CITIES
Ukraine shuts off power in major cities amid New Year’s Eve assault
Russia rained missiles and exploding drones on Ukraine’s capital and other cities Saturday in a deadly New Year’s Eve assault, punctuating President Vladimir Putin’s stated resolve to prosecute a war he called a “sacred duty to our ancestors and descendants.”
The aerial bombardments killed at least one person and partly destroyed a hotel in the capital, Kyiv, inflicted damage elsewhere and forced Ukraine’s warravaged electric utilities to preemptively shut off power.
“There are explosions in Kyiv!” the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Stay in shelters!”
Describing the New Year’s Eve assault as “inhuman” and Russia as a “terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine directed his rage at Putin and his subordinates, declaring in a videotaped reaction that “those who give orders for such strikes, and those who carry them out, will not receive a pardon. To put it mildly.”
Even for residents inured to brazen Russian bombings, the wail of air-raid sirens and the explosive thuds on New Year’s Eve were especially galling. If Putin’s intent was to demoralize them, the aerial assault only generated more hate.
“We know how vile they are and everybody knew they were ready to attack on the holiday, in theory,” said Viktoria Dubrovina, a retired Kyiv subway worker who joined others inspecting the damage after sirens stopped. “But we hoped something would change. But they did it.”
The attacks began in midafternoon, hours before Zelenskyy had been scheduled to deliver a muchanticipated speech to a nation where the Russian invasion has shaped the past 10 months and could for many more or far longer.
Air defense crews shot down 12 of at least 20 cruise missiles launched by Russia on Saturday afternoon, the top Ukrainian military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said on Telegram. The missiles had been launched from Russian strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea and from landbased launchers, he said.
In his own traditional New Year’s Eve address, Putin broke from practice and delivered the speech not at the Kremlin, but flanked by soldiers at an unspecified military base. He struck a defiant tone, repeating claims that his invasion of Ukraine was a defensive struggle for Russia’s existence.
Zelenskyy, whose impassioned nightly speeches have become a rallying cry for Ukrainian patriotism and defiance of Russia, had warned Thursday that the Russian military might launch another wave of missile attacks before any year-end commemorations. Moscow fired a large volley this past week, disrupting electrical power in Kyiv and in other cities.
What electricity had been available before the strikes was lost Saturday in Kyiv, in Odesa in the south, and in cities of the Dnepropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, as authorities switched off power to prevent short-circuits on the grid caused by strike damage.
Within a few minutes of the explosions in Kyiv, reports of damage in several neighborhoods of the capital came out, and a video posted on Telegram showed smoke rising above the city.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Zelenskyy, said in a post on social media that the city of Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine, had been attacked by exploding drones and that two people were wounded. In the Zaporizhzhia region, he said, residential buildings were damaged.