Russian strikes kill at least one in Kyiv
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia rained missiles and exploding drones on Ukraine’s capital and other cities on Saturday in a deadly New Year’s Eve assault, punctuating President Vladimir Putin’s stated resolve in a speech to continue 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 war-ravaged 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!”
Air defense 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 land-based launchers, he said.
For three months, Russia has launched volleys of cruise missiles and drones at Ukraine’s energy grid, in what military analysts say is a strategy of plunging the country into cold and darkness to lower morale.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned Thursday that the Russian military might launch another wave of missile attacks before year-end celebrations. Moscow fired a large volley this past week disrupting electrical power in Kyiv and in other cities.
In a videotaped message on Saturday, Zelenskyy called the Russian strikes on New Year’s Eve “inhuman.”
“A terrorist state will not be forgiven,” Zelenskyy said. “And those who give orders for such strikes, and those who carry them out, will not receive a pardon, to put it mildly.”
In Russia, Putin used his New Year’s address Saturday to rally support for the war, saying that “moral and historical righteousness is on our side.” Breaking with tradition, he spoke from a military base, flanked by soldiers.
What electricity had been available before the strikes went out on Saturday in much of the cities of Kyiv and Odesa and in the Dneprotrovsk region in central Ukraine as the authorities preemptively switched off power to prevent short-circuits on the grid from damage from strikes. Some 30% of consumers were without power in Kyiv, Klitschko said.
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. Klitschko said that in Kyiv a man had died and at least 14 others — including a Japanese journalist — had been hospitalized.
A hotel in Kyiv and a detached house were hit by missiles, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Zelenskyy, said. He said that the city of Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine, had been attacked by exploding drones and two people were wounded. In the Zaporizhzhia region, residential buildings were damaged and four people were injured, including a 14-year-old girl.
Between the larger waves of strikes Thursday and Saturday, the Russian military had kept up the pressure on Ukraine’s energy grid with smaller scale missile attacks, according to Ukraine’s military general staff.
On Saturday morning, Ukraine’s general staff said in a statement that Russia had fired five missiles and 10 exploding drones and carried out 29 airstrikes on civilian infrastructure over the previous 24 hours.