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 V. 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 pre-emptively shut off power.
“There are explosions in Kyiv!” Kyiv’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.
A lull followed the afternoon bombardment, but air raid sirens again sounded in Kyiv just after midnight, followed shortly by one explosion, as Russia continued its assault on Ukraine into the first hours of 2023. Ukrainian officials said air defense systems had knocked down an incoming missile, and Mr. Klitschko wrote on Telegram that a rocket fragment had struck a car, but there were no injuries.
Then, shortly after 2 a.m., a half-dozen loud explosions rocked central Kyiv, ringing out in an otherwise dark and still city, where residents were confined in their apartments by the curfew despite the holiday. It was unclear whether air defense weapons were firing or missiles or drones were hitting the city.
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.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had warned on Thursday that the Russian military might launch another wave of missile attacks before the 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, Mr. Zelensky called the Russian strikes on New Year’s Eve “inhuman.”
In Kyiv, the missiles on Saturday damaged the hotel, a large concert hall, a university campus, some residential buildings and two schools, according to the city’s mayor and defense officials. At least 20 people were injured, including a Japanese journalist, the mayor’s office said.
“A terrorist state will not be forgiven,” Mr. Zelensky 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, Mr. Putin used his New Year’s address on 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 Dnipropetrovsk region in central Ukraine as the authorities pre-emptively switched off power to prevent short-circuits on the grid from damage from strikes. Some 30 percent of consumers were without power in Kyiv, Mr. 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 the Telegram messaging site showed smoke rising above the city. Mr. Klitschko said that in Kyiv a man had died and at least 14 others — including a Japanese journalist — had been hospitalized.
Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an aide to Mr. Zelensky, 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 on 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.
The New York Times
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