KYIV, Ukraine — Russia rained rockets and exploding drones down the Ukrainian capital and other cities on Saturday in a deadly New Year’s Eve attack, ending its declared resolve President Vladimir V. Putin about waging a war he called a “sacred duty to our ancestors and descendants. “
The aerial bombardment killed at least one person and partially destroyed a hotel in the capital Kyiv, causing damage elsewhere and forcing Ukraine’s war-torn power companies to cut power. before.
“There are explosions in Kiev!” The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, wrote on the messaging app Telegram. “Stay in the shelter!”
Described the New Year’s Eve attacks as “inhumane” and labeled Russia a “terrorist state,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine directed his rage at Putin and his subordinates, claiming in a videotaped response that “those who ordered such attacks and those who carry out them , will not be pardoned. Speak softly.”
Even for residents accustomed to blatant Russian bombings, the sound of air raid sirens and bangs on New Year’s Eve and the first hours of 2023 are particularly horrendous. If Mr. Putin’s intention is to demoralize them, then the aerial attack will only create more hatred.
Viktoria Dubrovina, a retired Kyiv metro worker who joined others inspecting the damage after the sirens stopped, said: “We know how vile they are and people Everyone knew they were ready to strike on the holiday. “But we hope something will change. But they made it.”
In his New Year’s speech, Mr Zelensky said that Ukrainians woke up on February 24, the first day of the invasion, “to another life”. He said that the first wave of Russian missile strikes “finally destroyed the labyrinth of illusions. We have seen who is who. What are our friends and foes capable of, and most importantly, our abilities.”
He added that next year, “let this year be the year of the return” of soldiers returning to their families, prisoners returning home and Ukrainian soil returning to Ukraine. “Those who are temporarily occupied will become free forever,” he said.
The attacks began mid-afternoon, just hours before Mr Zelensky is scheduled to give a much-anticipated speech to a country where a Russian invasion has taken shape over the past 10 months and has maybe longer or longer.
Air defense teams shot down 12 of at least 20 cruise missiles launched by Russia on Saturday afternoon, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said on Telegram. He said the missiles were launched from Russian strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea and from land-based launchers.
In his own traditional New Year’s Eve speech, Putin broke with custom and did not give a speech at the Kremlin, but in the presence of soldiers at an unspecified military base. He used a defiant tone, repeating his claim that his invasion of Ukraine was a defensive struggle for Russia’s existence.
Mr Zelensky, whose nightly fiery speeches have become calls for Ukrainian patriotism and Russian defiance, warned on Thursday that the Russian military could launch an offensive. another rocket before any year-end celebrations. Moscow shoot a big volley over the past week, disrupting power in Kiev and other cities.
Electricity available before the strikes was lost on Saturday in Kiev, in Odesa in the south and in the cities of the Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine, as authorities cut power to prevent short circuits on the power grid. injury caused by any strike.
Within minutes of the explosion in Kyiv, reports of damage in several neighborhoods of the capital surfaced and a video posted on Telegram showed smoke billowing over the city.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Mr. Zelensky, said in a social media post that the city of Khmelnytskyi, in western Ukraine, was hit by a drone strike that exploded and two people were injured. He said that in the Zaporizhzhia area, residential buildings were damaged.
Between larger attacks on Thursday and Saturday, the Russian military has maintained pressure on Ukraine’s energy network with smaller-scale missile attacks, according to the Ukrainian military’s general staff.
In the past day, Russia fired five missiles and 10 exploded drones, and carried out 29 airstrikes on civilian infrastructure, the general staff said in a statement on Thursday morning. Seven.
How long Russia can sustain the offensive is a pressing question in Ukraine, which has hampered and fought back Russian troops on multiple fronts since Putin launched the invasion in February.
Ukraine has received increasingly sophisticated defensive weapons from the United States and other NATO nations, striking many Russian missiles and drones before they even reach their targets.
Mr. Putin, who has repeatedly said that Ukraine is not a legitimate country, used his year-end speech on Saturday as a platform to assert that “the moral and historical correctness of History is on our side.”
He defined the war in Ukraine as “the sacred duty of the Russian people to our ancestors and descendants”. He said Russian troops were fighting to ensure “peace and security for Russia”, while the West was using Ukraine “to weaken and divide Russia”.
And reiterating his mentions of Russian antiwar being traitors, Putin described the year as a year that “clearly separates bravery and heroism from betrayal and cowardice.” shy”.
Mr. Putin is working to rally Russian citizens who are increasingly feeling the effects of a conflict that has left their country most economically isolated since the breakup of the Soviet Union three decades ago.
Furthermore, the Russian military suffered a series of embarrassing defeats on the battlefield, and its strategy was increasingly criticized, even by supporters of Russia’s invasion of the country.
While the Kremlin initially envisioned a quick conquest of Ukraine in February, send troops quickly into cities with only a few days’ supply, the invasion pushed Russia into a tough war and exposed weaknesses in its conventional military capabilities. American officials say that more than 100,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded since the invasion in February.
“We will do all we can to help the families of our dead comrades,” Putin said in a speech on Saturday. “I share your pain with all my heart.”
In addition to trying to lift morale at home, Putin’s speech also represented his latest attempt to signal to the West that he has no plans to ease the onslaught on Ukraine.
His single focus on the war in his New Year’s speech showed that the Kremlin had completely abandoned its previous strategy of mitigating the war to the broader public, although officials still considered the meeting The war was just a “special military operation”.
New Year’s Eve is also a reminder of one of Putin’s biggest miscalculations: uniting the West before invasion.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in his own traditional New Year’s Eve speech, said that despite “a difficult year”, Germany and the rest of Europe had suffered unexpected difficulties. caused by Putin’s war.
Scholz’s first 12 months as chancellor were among the most tumultuous in postwar German history. It was not what he, nor nearly anyone in Europe, had expected.
“Putin is waging a war of imperialist aggression in central Europe,” he said in a speech that aired on Saturday night. “This watershed moment is also a tough test for us and ours nation.”
But on the eve of the new year, Mr. Scholz argues that 2022 also reflects strengths worth celebrating.
“The history of 2022 is not entirely a history of war, suffering and anxiety,” he said. “After all, Putin did not manage, as he planned, to overwhelm Ukraine in just a few days.”
“On the contrary, Ukrainians are bravely defending their homeland – thanks in part to our help,” he said. “And we will continue to support Ukraine.”
Erika Salomon, Rick Gladstone and Matt Surman contribution report.
