KYIV, Ukraine — Fed up with cramming each other for safety in their hallways and bathrooms during Russian airstrikes, residents of a Kyiv neighborhood took a different approach in moments the first engraving of New Year’s Day.
Despite the risk, dozens of people in a high-rise apartment complex took to their balconies and sang the Ukrainian national anthem shortly after midnight.
Slightly out of tune and hoarse, with some voices sounding drunk, they videoed themselves as a swarm of exploding drones buzzed over the capital in a strike following a barrage of rockets earlier on New Year’s Eve, kill at least one person and injured more than 20 people. Others post memes and exchange jokes.
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, consider Russia a terrorist state. The air defenses opened fire all night. A new searchlight system, intended to detect nighttime drones, has swept across Kyiv. An air strike warning sounded and explosions reverberated through the city’s streets. However, in a central area of the capital, one could hear some New Year’s Eve parties continuing even after the explosions.
The momentary joviality masked some hard realities for a country still under attack.
After the fall, Kiev turned the tide in the ground battle in the southeast, taking the lead seesaw fight to continue. But despite its successes on the battlefield, ten months after the war, Ukraine can do little to prevent Russia from launching missile attacks, even if defense does not reduce their impact.
Now, the Ukrainians have little choice but to endure – accept whatever Russia can fire at them, while holding on to their resolve and defiance.
During the New Year’s Eve attack, the Russian military fired 31 cruise missiles, the Ukrainian General Staff said Sunday in a morning update on the fighting. Then there was a drone strike with 45 flying bombs launched during the night — 13 before New Year’s and 32 after midnight. The Ukrainian military said it shot down all of them. There is no means to independently confirm the claims.
In the capital, authorities have begun collecting metal debris from rockets and drones shot down in the city. Fragments landed The cars, on the road and at a subway stop, temporarily closed a subway line, officials said.
Ukraine has been and is developing Long range drones to strike back, and Russian airfields where bombers take off to launch cruise missiles have been hit by drones twice in December. But these are minor things compared to the waves of attacks. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine’s cities and civil infrastructure such as power plants, poles, and hydroelectric dams. There have been 11 attacks since those attacks began in October.
After the collapse, Mr. Zelensky persuaded his allies to urgently transfer some sophisticated air defense systems to Ukraine.
In the ground fighting, the movement has mostly stalled since the Ukrainian army push Russian forces from the western bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region, southern Ukraine, in November.
The offensive allowed Ukraine to move its artillery forward. Now, many – though not all – of Russia’s supply lines in southern Ukraine are within range of Ukrainian long-range artillery, which is hitting targets behind Russian lines, even if the The bodies of these lines do not change.
To the east of the Donbas region, Russia continued to push ahead with its only remaining offensive.
The Russian force is partly composed of units assembled by a private military contracting company, and consists of convicts who have been promised amnesty in exchange for fighting for Moscow in Ukraine. Trench warfare raged back and forth in the suburban districts of Bakhmut and neighboring villages for months, with advances and retreats by both sides often measured in several hundred yards.
The War Research Institute, a Washington-based research group, over the weekend said Russian attacks had slowed due to a lack of artillery shells. Movement on both sides was also slowed as wet winter conditions could limit tanks and other heavily armored vehicles on the road, lest they become bogged down in the mud.
“I believe Ukraine has gained irreversible momentum,” Lieutenant General Frederick Hodges, a former US commander in Europe, said in an interview late last month. Pointing to Ukraine’s continued attacks on supply lines, he said, “This is exactly how to set the conditions for the next phase of maneuvering.”
But the missile war is less favorable for Ukraine.
For all their defiant spirit and determination, Ukrainians remain vulnerable. Hiding underground, or in hallways or bathrooms in their homes, they do what they can to protect themselves from repeated missile attacks. Children are sometimes placed in iron baths for extra protection from flying debris.
Military analysts said the attacks on critical infrastructure targets were aimed at cutting power and heating during the winter and demoralizing the population. An exploding drone shot down in Kyiv had a mocking message written on its wings: “Happy New Year!!!” and the word “Boom,” according to a photo published on the social networking site. The photo cannot be independently verified.
Weeks of power outages took their toll. During the autumn, the net flow of Ukrainians to Poland – already the main destination for millions of refugees – increased slightly.
Jokes mocking the Russian military about their defeats may boost Ukrainian morale through strikes, but they are often reinforced by boiling anger.
In Kyiv, residents expressed outrage at the holiday attack as they gathered on Saturday afternoon at sites damaged by rocket attacks or falling debris. The anger is all the more apparent because when Russia lost on the battlefield, it began targeting its missiles at targets that had no direct military value. Mr Zelensky has called such strikes “revenge of the losers”.
During this holiday season, a popular Christmas tree ornament is a figurine of Vladimir Putin. It was hung by a tiny noose.
After Mr. Putin spoke New Year’s Eve address standing in front of Russian soldiers, a modified version of the image that quickly went viral in Ukraine of the Russian president stood in front of a pile of black body bags.
