DONETSK, UKRAINE – DECEMBER 30: Soldiers of the 59th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces fire grad missiles on Russian positions in Russia-occupied Donbas region on December 30, 2022 in Donetsk, Ukraine. A large swath of Donetsk region has been held by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Russia has tried to expand its control here since the February 24 invasion. (Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images)
Pierre Crom | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Ukraine killed dozens of Russian servicemen using U.S.-supplied artillery to hit a base in an occupied part of the country on New Years Eve, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Sixty-three servicemen died after 4 HIMARS artillery warheads struck a “provisional base,” the Russian Defense Ministry said Monday in a Telegram post. Two projectiles were shot down, the statement added.
Earlier, a senior Russian-backed official in occupied Donetsk said “vocational school” in the city of Makiivka had been hit by U.S.-supplied HIMARS.
“A significant number of dead and wounded,” Daniil Bezsonov said on Telegram Sunday night.
While Ukraine has not taken responsibility for the attack, its armed forces posted a cryptic message on Telegram: “As a result of ‘careless handling of heating devices,’ neglecting security measures, and smoking in an unspecified place, Santa packed about 400 corpses of Russian servicemen in bags.”
“About 300 more have wounds of varying degrees of severity,” the account added.
NBC News was unable to verify claims from either side. Ukrainian officials were not immediately available for comment.
On Sunday, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said many civilian facilities had come under Ukrainian fire over New Year’s Eve, according to TASS.
Bezsonov criticized the “crowded deployment of personnel,” which he said helped lead to the casualties.
Russian forces have also been pummeling cities across Ukraine in recent days, launching missile and drone attacks on key civilian infrastructure.
Overnight, capital Kyiv came under attack from the Iranian-made drones. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 22 were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighboring provinces.
“As a result of the night shelling of the capital, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged. There are emergency power outages in the city,” Klitschko said Sunday night in a Telegram post.
Energy infrastructure facilities were damaged as the result of the attack and an explosion occurred in one city district, the mayor said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was caused by drones or other munitions. A wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized, Klitschko added, and emergency power outages were underway in the capital.
Since October, Russia has carried out airstrikes on power and water supplies almost weekly.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia’s defense ministry said Monday that 63 Russian soldiers have been killed by a Ukrainian strike on a facility in the eastern Donetsk region where military personnel was stationed. Ukrainian forces fired six rockets from a HIMARS launch system and two of them were shot down, a Russian defense ministry statement.
The strike, using a U.S.-supplied precision weapon that has proven critical in enabling Ukrainian forces to hit key targets, delivered a new setback for Russia which in recent months has reeled from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian military has not directly confirmed the strike, but tacitly acknowledged it. The Strategic Communications Directorate of Ukraine’s Armed Forces claimed Sunday that some 400 mobilized Russian soldiers were killed in a vocational school building in Makiivka and about 300 more were wounded. That claim could not be independently verified. The Russian statement said the strike occurred “in the area of Makiivka” and didn’t mention the vocational school.
Meanwhile, Russia deployed multiple exploding drones in another nighttime attack on Ukraine, officials said Monday, as the Kremlin signaled no letup in its strategy of using bombardments to target the country’s energy infrastructure and wear down Ukrainian resistance to its invasion.
The barrage was the latest in a series of relentless year-end attacks, including one that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve.
On Monday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 40 drones “headed for Kyiv” overnight. All of them were destroyed, according to air defense forces.
Klitschko said 22 drones were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighboring provinces.
Energy infrastructure facilities were damaged as the result of the attack and an explosion occurred in one city district, the mayor said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was caused by drones or other munitions. A wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized, Klitschko added, and emergency power outages were underway in the capital.
In the outlying Kyiv region a “critical infrastructure object” and residential buildings were hit, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Russia has carried out airstrikes on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of “energy terrorism” as the aerial bombardments have left many people without heat amid freezing temperatures. Ukrainian officials say Moscow is “weaponizing winter” in its effort to demoralize the Ukrainian resistance.
Ukraine is using sophisticated Western-supplied weapons to help shoot down Russia’s missiles and drones, as well as send artillery fire into Russian-held areas of the country.
Moscow’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24 has gone awry, putting pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin as his ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. He said in his New Year’s address to the nation that 2022 was “a year of difficult, necessary decisions.”
Putin insists he had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security — an assertion condemned by the West, which says Moscow bears full responsibility for the war.
Russia is currently observing public holidays through Jan. 8.
Drones, missiles and artillery shells launched by Russian forces also struck areas across Ukraine.
Five people were wounded in the Monday morning shelling of a Ukraine-controlled area of the southern Kherson region, its Ukrainian Gov. Yaroslav Yanushevich said on Telegram.
The Russian forces attacked the city of Beryslav, the official said, firing at a local market, likely from a tank. Three of the wounded are in serious condition and are being evacuated to Kherson, Yanushevich said.
Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile was also destroyed, according to Reznichenko. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted.
Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported Monday that 39 Iranian-made exploding Shahed drones were shot down overnight, as well as two Russian-made Orlan drones and a X-59 missile.
“We are staying strong,” the Ukrainian defense ministry tweeted.
A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.
Multiple blasts rocked the capital and other areas of Ukraine on Saturday and through the night. The strikes came 36 hours after widespread missile attacks Russia launched Thursday to damage energy infrastructure facilities, and the unusually quick follow-up alarmed Ukrainian officials.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the Bryansk region that borders with Ukraine, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday morning. A village was left without power as a result, he said.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
An apparent Ukrainian strike in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine appears to have killed a large number of Russian troops, according to the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian military bloggers and former officials.
The strike took place just after midnight on Sunday, New Year’s Day, on a vocational school housing Russian conscripts in Makiivka, in the Donetsk region, according to both Ukrainian and pro-Russian accounts.
The attack has led to vocal criticism of Moscow’s military from pro-Russian military bloggers, who claimed that the troops lacked protection and were reportedly being quartered next to a large cache of ammunition, which is said to have exploded when Ukrainian HIMARS rockets hit the school.
The Ukrainian military claimed that around 400 Russian soldiers were killed and further 300 were wounded, without directly acknowledging a role. CNN cannot independently confirm those numbers or the weapons used in the strike. Some pro-Russian military bloggers have also estimated that the number of dead and wounded could run in the hundreds.
The Russian defense ministry on Monday acknowledged the attack and claimed that 63 Russian servicemen died, which would make it one of the deadliest single episodes of the war for Moscow’s forces.
Video reportedly from the scene of the attack circulated widely on Telegram, including on an official Ukrainian military channel. It shows a pile of smoking rubble, in which almost no part of the building appears to be standing.
“Greetings and congratulations” to the separatists and conscripts who “were brought to the occupied Makiivka and crammed into the building of vocational school,” the Strategic Communications Directorate of the Chief Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram. “Santa packed around 400 corpses of [Russian soldiers] in bags.”
The Russian defense ministry said the Ukrainian attack used US-made HIMARS rockets.
Daniil Bessonov, a former official in the Russia-backed Donetsk administration, said on Telegram that “apparently, the high command is still unaware of the capabilities of this weapon.”
“I hope that those responsible for the decision to use this facility will be reprimanded,” Bessonov said. “There are enough abandoned facilities in Donbas with sturdy buildings and basements where personnel can be quartered.”
A Russian propagandist who blogs about the war effort on Telegram, Igor Girkin, claimed that the building was almost completely destroyed by the secondary detonation of ammunition stores.
“Nearly all the military equipment, which stood close to the building without the slightest sign of camouflage, was also destroyed,” Girkin said. “There are still no final figures on the number of casualties, as many people are still missing.”
Girkin has long decried Russian generals whom he claims direct the war effort far from the frontline, calling them “unlearned in principle” and unwilling to listen to warnings about putting equipment and personnel so close together in HIMARS range. Girkin was previously minister of defense of the self-proclaimed, Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, and was found guilty by a Dutch court of mass murder for his involvement in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.
Sergey Markov, another pro-Russian military blogger, said there was “a great deal of sloppiness” on the part of the Russian command.
Boris Rozhin, who also blogs about the war effort under the nickname Colonelcassad, said that “incompetence and an inability to grasp the experience of war continue to be a serious problem.”
“As you can see, despite several months of war, some conclusions are not made, hence the unnecessary losses, which, if the elementary precautions relating to the dispersal and concealment of personnel were taken, might have not happened.”
Donetsk has been held by pro-Russian separatists since 2014 and it is one of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow sought to annex in October in violation of international law.
The news comes after the Ukrainian military claimed that more than 700 Russian soldiers had been killed Saturday, but did not specify where.
Russian forces “lost 760 people killed just yesterday, (and) continue to attempt offensive actions on Bakhmut,” the military’s general staff said Sunday.
Russian units have been pressing an offensive towards the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk for months but have suffered heavy losses as Ukrainian forces have targeted them in what is largely open rural territory.
Air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine over the weekend as fresh rounds of Russian missile strikes hit several regions. The attacks killed at least six people in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions, while a man was injured early Monday.
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia deployed multiple drones overnight to attack parts of Ukraine and dozens were shot down, Ukrainian officials said Monday, in a series of relentless attacks through the weekend that killed three civilians on New Year’s Eve.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 40 drones “headed for Kyiv” overnight, according to air defense forces, and all of them were destroyed.
Klitschko said 22 drones were destroyed over Kyiv, three in the outlying Kyiv region and 15 over neighboring provinces.
Energy infrastructure facilities were damaged as the result of the attack and an explosion occurred in one city district, the mayor said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was caused by drones or other munitions. A wounded 19-year-old man was hospitalized, Klitschko added, and emergency power outages were underway in the capital.
In the outlying Kyiv region a “critical infrastructure object” and residential buildings were hit, Gov. Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Seven drones were shot down over the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Gov. Vitali Kim, and three more were shot down in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, a missile was also destroyed, according to Reznichenko. He said that energy infrastructure in the region was being targeted.
Ukraine’s Air Force Command reported Monday that 39 Iranian-made exploding Shahed drones were shot down overnight, as well as two Russian-made Orlan drones and a X-59 missile across Ukraine.
A blistering New Year’s Eve assault killed at least four civilians across the country, Ukrainian authorities reported, and wounded dozens. The fourth victim, a 46-year-old resident of Kyiv, died in a hospital on Monday morning, Klitschko said.
Multiple blasts rocked the capital and other areas of Ukraine on Saturday and through the night. The strikes came 36 hours after widespread missile attacks Russia launched Thursday to damage energy infrastructure facilities, and the unusually quick follow-up alarmed Ukrainian officials.
Russia has carried out airstrikes on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October, increasing the suffering of Ukrainians, while its ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance.
In Russia, a Ukrainian drone hit an energy facility in the Bryansk region that borders with Ukraine, Bryansk regional governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday morning. A village was left without power as a result, he said.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
BANGKOK — Shares began the year mixed on Monday, with most markets closed for New Year holidays.
This week brings employment data and minutes from the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve as it battles inflation. That will likely remain investors’ overarching concern as 2023 begins with persisting uncertainties over the war in Ukraine and over whether interest rate hikes meant to tame inflation might lead to recession.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.1% to 2,233.96 and the Sensex in Mumbai edged less than 0.1% higher, to 60,871.24. Jakarta’s benchmark was lower.
The future for Germany’s DAX was down 0.5%.
U.S. stock markets will be closed Monday in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday.
Over the weekend, a report showed that Chinese manufacturing contracted for a third consecutive month in December, in the biggest drop since February 2020, as the country grapples with a nationwide COVID-19 surge after suddenly easing anti-epidemic measures.
A monthly purchasing managers’ index declined to 47.0 from 48.0 in November, according to data released from the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday. Numbers below 50 indicate a contraction in activity.
China is in the process of removing strict COVID-19 policies that crimped production for raw materials and goods and discouraged travel. It’s uncertain what impact the reopening will have on the global economy.
The minutes of the Fed’s meeting potentially will give investors more insight into its next moves. The government will also release its November report on job openings Wednesday. That will be followed by a weekly update on unemployment on Thursday. The closely-watched monthly employment report is due Friday.
Wall Street is also waiting on corporate earnings reports, which will start flowing in around the middle of January. Companies have been warning investors that inflation will likely crimp their profits and revenue in 2023, even after they raised prices on everything from food to clothing to offset inflation, helping to pad their profit margins.
On Friday, U.S. markets logged more losses in quiet trading, closing the book on the worst year for the benchmark S&P 500 since 2008.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% to 3,839.50. It posted a 5.9% loss for the month of December and a 19.4% decline in 2022, or 18.1%, including dividends.
That’s just its third annual decline since the financial crisis 14 years ago and a painful reversal for investors after the S&P 500 notched a gain of nearly 27% in 2021. All told, the index lost $8.2 trillion in value, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The Dow dropped 0.2% on Friday to close at 33,147.25, down 8.8% for the year. The Nasdaq slipped 0.1% to 10,466.48, racking up an annual loss of 33.1%. The Russell 2000 shed 0.3%, ending at 1,761.25.
Stocks struggled all year as pandemic stimulus was withdrawn and inflation put increasing pressure on consumers, raising fears that economies may slip into recession. Central banks raised interest rates to fight high prices.
The Fed’s key lending rate stood at a range of 0% to 0.25% at the beginning of 2022 and closed the year at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% after seven increases. The U.S. central bank forecasts that will reach a range of 5% to 5.25% by the end of 2023. Its forecast doesn’t call for a rate cut before 2024.
Rising interest rates prompted investors to sell the high-priced shares of technology giants such as Apple and Microsoft and other companies that flourished as the economy recovered from the pandemic.
Amazon and Netflix lost roughly 50% of their market value. Tesla and Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, each dropped more than 60%, their biggest-ever annual declines.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine worsened inflationary pressure earlier in the year by making oil, gas and food commodity prices even more volatile amid existing supply chain issues. Oil closed Friday around $80, about $5 higher than where it started the year. But in between oil jumped above $120, helping energy stocks post the only gain among the 11 sectors in the S&P 500, up 59%.
In currency dealings, the U.S. dollar rose to 130.93 Japanese yen from 130.89 yen. The euro fell to $1.0697 from $1.0699.
———
AP Business Writers Alex Veiga and Damian J. Troise contributed.
BANGKOK — Shares began the year mixed on Monday, with most markets closed for New Year holidays.
This week brings employment data and minutes from the latest meeting of the Federal Reserve as it battles inflation. That will likely remain investors’ overarching concern as 2023 begins with persisting uncertainties over the war in Ukraine and over whether interest rate hikes meant to tame inflation might lead to recession.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.1% to 2,233.96 and the Sensex in Mumbai edged less than 0.1% higher, to 60,871.24. Jakarta’s benchmark was lower.
The future for Germany’s DAX was down 0.5%.
U.S. stock markets will be closed Monday in observance of the New Year’s Day holiday.
Over the weekend, a report showed that Chinese manufacturing contracted for a third consecutive month in December, in the biggest drop since February 2020, as the country grapples with a nationwide COVID-19 surge after suddenly easing anti-epidemic measures.
A monthly purchasing managers’ index declined to 47.0 from 48.0 in November, according to data released from the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday. Numbers below 50 indicate a contraction in activity.
China is in the process of removing strict COVID-19 policies that crimped production for raw materials and goods and discouraged travel. It’s uncertain what impact the reopening will have on the global economy.
The minutes of the Fed’s meeting potentially will give investors more insight into its next moves. The government will also release its November report on job openings Wednesday. That will be followed by a weekly update on unemployment on Thursday. The closely-watched monthly employment report is due Friday.
Wall Street is also waiting on corporate earnings reports, which will start flowing in around the middle of January. Companies have been warning investors that inflation will likely crimp their profits and revenue in 2023, even after they raised prices on everything from food to clothing to offset inflation, helping to pad their profit margins.
On Friday, U.S. markets logged more losses in quiet trading, closing the book on the worst year for the benchmark S&P 500 since 2008.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% to 3,839.50. It posted a 5.9% loss for the month of December and a 19.4% decline in 2022, or 18.1%, including dividends.
That’s just its third annual decline since the financial crisis 14 years ago and a painful reversal for investors after the S&P 500 notched a gain of nearly 27% in 2021. All told, the index lost $8.2 trillion in value, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The Dow dropped 0.2% on Friday to close at 33,147.25, down 8.8% for the year. The Nasdaq slipped 0.1% to 10,466.48, racking up an annual loss of 33.1%. The Russell 2000 shed 0.3%, ending at 1,761.25.
Stocks struggled all year as pandemic stimulus was withdrawn and inflation put increasing pressure on consumers, raising fears that economies may slip into recession. Central banks raised interest rates to fight high prices.
The Fed’s key lending rate stood at a range of 0% to 0.25% at the beginning of 2022 and closed the year at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% after seven increases. The U.S. central bank forecasts that will reach a range of 5% to 5.25% by the end of 2023. Its forecast doesn’t call for a rate cut before 2024.
Rising interest rates prompted investors to sell the high-priced shares of technology giants such as Apple and Microsoft and other companies that flourished as the economy recovered from the pandemic.
Amazon and Netflix lost roughly 50% of their market value. Tesla and Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, each dropped more than 60%, their biggest-ever annual declines.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine worsened inflationary pressure earlier in the year by making oil, gas and food commodity prices even more volatile amid existing supply chain issues. Oil closed Friday around $80, about $5 higher than where it started the year. But in between oil jumped above $120, helping energy stocks post the only gain among the 11 sectors in the S&P 500, up 59%.
In currency dealings, the U.S. dollar rose to 130.93 Japanese yen from 130.89 yen. The euro fell to $1.0697 from $1.0699.
———
AP Business Writers Alex Veiga and Damian J. Troise contributed.
Americans familiar with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty might consider them Cold War relics, vestiges of a time when broadcasting straight news behind the Iron Curtain was considered key to promoting democracy. But with a new Cold War descending and a hot war blazing in the heart of Europe, RFE/RL – as they’re also known – are back in vogue. With a $20 million boost from Congress – the U.S.-taxpayer-funded broadcasters are beaming and streaming original content – mostly video these days – into many of the same former Soviet republics they targeted in the 1950s.
Marian Kushnir is a familiar face on Radio Free Europe.
A Ukrainian war correspondent, he’s been slogging alongside his country’s troops with his camera ever since the Russians invaded.
We spoke with him in November from a Prague control room alongside his editor. Kushnir was in Bakhmut, under siege by Russian troops.
Marian Kushnir
Marian Kushnir (Translation): I will say this in Ukrainian. This is the place where they help Ukrainian soldiers who come here from the frontline. This is a field hospital. There are about 100 wounded in here.
Bill Whitaker: You were talking about the routine of it all, but does it feel to you that you are daily putting yourself in harm’s way?
Marian Kushnir (Translation): This is the war. I am always at risk. Even being right here in this hospital I understand that next to it some shelling is happening right at this moment, but everyone in Ukraine is now in danger.
Kushnir’s harrowing accounts can be seen in many formats: live television, YouTube, TikTok – conveying as much as he can the reality of humanity’s ultimate folly.
Marian Kushnir (Translation): The war for me is the stench of blood, gunpowder, sweat and constant mud… And there is no romance about the war. It is about fear, grief and tears. No footage, photos or words can express what is happening right here on the battlefield.
Jamie Fly: We’re an international, public broadcaster. And we operate in countries where freedom of the press either does not exist or is under assault.
Jamie Fly, a former adviser to the George W. Bush administration, is the president and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which has been based in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, since 1995.
Jamie Fly: We’re funded by the U.S. Congress. But by law, we’re editorially independent of the U.S. government.
Bill Whitaker: Today it’s not just radio, it’s mostly video, correct?
Jamie Fly: Yeah. So, we constantly are debating when to change the name. And that may come in the years ahead.
Bill Whitaker: So it’s mostly seen on the internet?
Jamie Fly: It varies, depending on what market we’re in. In Iran, we’re on radio. Pakistan we’re available on radio. But in places like Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, people are primarily engaging with our content on social media.
Jamie Fly
This modern newsroom is like a journalistic version of the United Nations.
Each service – Russian, Ukrainian, Iranian and 19 others – is made up of emigres and expats from those countries. They have their own newsrooms and broadcast facilities.
Jamie Fly: You can read our journalistic standards document online. And we have a rigorous editorial process that determines what we cover.
Jamie Fly: I visit as many of our 20 bureaus as possible.
Russia’s multibillion-dollar effort to push disinformation abroad has given the Cold War radios new life. They’re adding two new bureaus and constructing studios here in Prague for an additional Russian language channel featuring documentaries, music, and comedies. Fly says 40 million people from 23 countries across this broad landmass tune in to their coverage, 11 million inside Russia, despite the Kremlin’s labeling them a “foreign agent.”
Jamie Fly: That is a common refrain we hear from the Kremlin, from authoritarians that don’t like us. And we’ve dealt with that by being very transparent. We cover governments, even governments that are friendly towards the U.S. just as tough as we cover the Kremlin.
Radio Free Europe was created and nurtured by legendary cold warriors, including diplomat George Kennan, CIA director Allen Dulles and Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Bill Whitaker: This place, it oozes with, with history. Can you tell me about the driving force, the soul of this place?
Jamie Fly: Certainly for the journalists it’s a commitment to the truth. We live right now in what, what some would call a post-truth age where people increasingly don’t even believe in an objective truth. But this was an organization in the 1950s that was founded on the notion that there is an objective truth.
One truth the broadcasters still struggle with is the fact that they were originally funded by the CIA. Congress ended that affiliation in 1971, and mandated the radios operate without any U.S. government interference. But that hasn’t stopped other governments from interfering with them.
The history of Radio Free Europe is filled with Cold War intrigue. The American broadcaster has been a perennial target of Soviet and later Russian spies. A number of deadly plots have been foiled, including one to poison saltshakers in the cafeteria.
Still, some high-profile journalists have been assassinated, including RFE host and Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who was jabbed with a poisoned umbrella tip in London in 1978. The terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal” bombed its Munich headquarters in 1981. All told, 18 Radio Free Europe journalists have been killed. Two are imprisoned in Belarus, one in Crimea.
Pavel Butorin
Pavel Butorin runs RFE’s 24/7 Russian-language television channel, Current Time. He told us viewership has soared since the invasion of Ukraine.
Bill Whitaker: How many viewers are you getting?
Pavel Butorin: For TV alone, we report 6.2 million weekly views. But for digital platforms this year, we’ve reported 3 billion online views.
Stickers posted throughout Russia that direct people to Current Time’s website
He says many Russians watch their live YouTube feed in secret, using “virtual private networks.” Recently, stickers started showing up in Russian cities. They appear to be ads for cheap sugar, but when you scan the barcodes…
Pavel Butorin: The QR code, those quick response codes took you to Current Time’s website. Another one was, you know, IKEA sale. But the actual QR code took you to our YouTube channel. And we had nothing to do with that.
In 2022, the Kremlin turned back the clock. It banned independent media outlets, forced RFE’s Moscow bureau to shut down and made it illegal to call Russia’s action in Ukraine a “war,” with punishment up to 15 years in jail.
As anchor of Current Time’s nightly newscast, Ksenia Sokolyanskaya flouts that law nearly every day. Born and raised in Moscow – she is essentially exiled here in Prague.
Bill Whitaker: Do you think you will be able to go home some day?
Ksenia Sokolyanskaya: I honestly don’t know.
Bill Whitaker: Really?
Ksenia Sokolyanskaya: There is a chance, you know, that me or any of my colleagues could be, you know, detained straight at the airport. I think there is a reason why almost every fair journalist left the country since the beginning of the war.
Ksenia Sokolyanskaya
Bill Whitaker: Can you explain to those of us from outside of the country, what’s happening in Russia?
Ksenia Sokolyanskaya: I think that things are moving in a very scary direction. I’m sure that this war brings disastrous consequence, not only for Ukraine and Ukrainian, but for Russia and Russians.
A million Russian citizens have fled the country in the past year and a half, including these four
Radio Free Europe journalists who – until recently – worked in its Moscow bureau.
Sergei Dobrynin: Journalists are fatalists, I think, especially Russian journalists.
Bill Whitaker: “Fatalists.”
Sergei Dobrynin: Fatalists, yes.
Sergei Dobrynin
Sergei Dobrynin is an investigative reporter.
Bill Whitaker: Do all of you expect to return to Russia?
Sergei Dobrynin: Not before Putin dies, I think.
Bill Whitaker: It’s home, though.
Sergei Dobrynin: Yes. I still consider Russia to be, to be “home.” But to me, Russia is occupied by Putin, and also Russian people are occupied, many of them, by Russian propaganda.
Natalya Dzhanpoladova
Natalya Dzhanpoladova covers human rights.
Natalya Dzhanpoladova: When I came to RFE/RL I understood that this media gives you a chance to tell the truth, to cover your stories as you see it, as you want to present it. And there is no pressure of some guidelines from the government.
Anastasia Tishchenko is at odds with both her country, and her parents, who believe Russian propaganda.
Anastasia Tishchenko: I try to send them my reports, but they still believe not to me, but, say, still believe to Russian television. They’re afraid of truth.
Bill Whitaker: “Afraid” of the truth?
Anastasia Tishchenko: I guess. That’s how propaganda works.
Anastasia Tishchenko
Alexey Alexandrov did a stint inside Ukraine before leaving Russia.
Alexey Alexandrov: After the war begins, I decided that I would like to go back to Ukraine, not Russia. Because I feel responsible in a way for this war.
Bill Whitaker: What do you mean you feel responsible?
Alexey Alexandrov: As a part of Russian society. And probably I will like to go back to Ukraine to help the people in Ukraine to rebuild their country.
Alexey Alexandrov
His Radio Free Europe colleagues inside Ukraine have been doing just that. Natalie Sedletska is host and executive producer of an investigative news series. Her reporting helped expose the corruption of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia. Now she’s uncovering bigger crimes.
Natalie Sedletska: When the full-scale war started, me and my team, we found out that our investigative skills can really help now, in new reality. And we started to investigate Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Bill Whitaker: You uncovered, you documented war crimes.
Natalie Sedletska: That’s true. You’ve heard of Bucha, right? Unfortunately, there are dozens if not hundreds of such cities that suffered so much from Russian atrocities.
Natalie Sedletska
Bucha was the site of the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops. Sedletska works in RFE’s Kyiv bureau under constant threat of Russian missiles.
Natalie Sedletska: If you can imagine any tragedy, a mother lost her child. A child lost his mother and dad. Like, imagine all horrible things, they are going on now in my country.
Bill Whitaker: And you’ve decided to stay?
Natalie Sedletska: Being a reporter in Ukraine it’s our mission of course. So why I’m telling you these stories? Because I’m afraid of untold stories. I’m afraid that we will not be able to tell all the truths that is going on because so much is going on.
Produced by Graham Messick and Jack Weingart. Broadcast associates, Eliza Costas and Natalie Breitkopf. Edited by Matthew Lev.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty may seem like a Cold War relic, but with the war in Ukraine, the broadcaster is again being counted on to transmit straight news into areas where free press is challenged.
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After 10 months of intense combat, the war in Ukraine heads into a cold and dark New Year. For Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it is a fight for survival; for Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, it’s a military debacle. CBS News national security correspondent David Martin talks with military scholar Fred Kagan about the prospects of Russia breaking the Ukrainians’ will to fight as Putin attacks their cities and energy grid.
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People in Ukraine faced a grim start to 2023 as renewed Russian missile and drone attacks followed a blistering New Year’s Eve assault across the country, according to authorities.
Air raid sirens sounded in the capital Kyiv shortly after midnight on Sunday, followed by a barrage of missiles that interrupted the small celebrations residents held at home due to wartime curfews. As the sirens blared, some people shouted from their balconies, “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!”
Another strike at noon Sunday in the southern Zaporizhzhia region killed one person, according to the head of the regional military administration, Alexander Starukh.
In a video address on Sunday night, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his citizens’ “sense of unity, of authenticity, of life itself”. Russia, he said, “will not take away a single year from Ukraine. They will not take away our independence. We will not give them anything.”
“Drones, missiles, everything else will not help them,” he said of the Russians. “Because we stand united. They are united only by fear.”
Ukrainian forces in the air and on the ground shot down 45 Iranian-made explosive drones fired by Russia on Saturday night and before dawn on Sunday, Zelenskyy said. Iran denies providing Russia with the weapons.
“Of course it was hard to celebrate fully because we understand that our soldiers can’t be with their family,” Evheniya Shulzhenko said while sitting with her husband on a park bench overlooking Kyiv.
But a “really powerful” New Year’s Eve speech by Zelenskyy lifted her spirits and made her proud to be Ukrainian, Shulzhenko said. She recently moved to Kyiv after living in Bakhmut and Kharkiv, two cities that have experienced some of the heaviest fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Multiple blasts rocked the capital and other areas of Ukraine on Saturday and through the night, wounding dozens. An Associated Press news agency photographer at the scene of an explosion in Kyiv saw a woman’s body as her husband and son stood nearby.
Ukraine’s largest university, the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv, reported significant damage to its buildings and campus. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said two schools were damaged, including a kindergarten.
Instead of New Year’s fireworks, Oleksander Dugyn said he and his friends and family in Kyiv watched the sparks caused by Ukrainian air defence forces countering Russian attacks.
“We already know the sound of rockets, we know the moment they fly, we know the sound of drones. The sound is like the roar of a moped,” said Dugin, who was strolling with his family in the park. “We hold on the best we can.”
Russia said on Sunday that its New Year attacks targeted “the facilities of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine” that are involved in the production of drones.
“Storage facilities and launch sites” for the drones have also been destroyed, the Russian defence ministry said. “The plans of the Kyiv regime to carry out terror attacks against Russia in the near future have been thwarted.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Russia’s New Year attacks targeted central areas of large cities and pointed to a change in Moscow’s tactics.
“Russia no longer has any military goals and is trying to kill as many civilians as possible and destroy more civilian facilities,” he tweeted. “A war to kill.”
The strikes came 36 hours after Russia launched widespread missile attacks on Thursday to damage energy infrastructure facilities. Saturday’s unusually quick follow-up alarmed Ukrainian officials. Russia has carried out air attacks on Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October, while its ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance.
Nighttime shelling in parts of the southern city of Kherson killed one person and blew out hundreds of windows in a children’s hospital, according to deputy presidential chief of staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko. Ukrainian forces reclaimed the city in November after Russia’s forces withdrew across the Dnieper River, which bisects the Kherson region.
When shells hit the children’s hospital on Saturday night, surgeons were operating on a 13-year-old boy who was seriously wounded in a nearby village that evening, Kherson Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said. The boy was transferred in serious condition to a hospital about 99km (62 miles) away in Mykolaiv.
Elsewhere, a 22-year-old woman died of wounds from a Saturday rocket attack in the eastern town of Khmelnytskyi, the city’s mayor said.
While Russia’s bombardments have left many Ukrainians without heating and electricity due to damage or controlled blackouts meant to preserve the remaining power supply, Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator said Sunday there would be no restrictions on electricity use for one day.
“The power industry is doing everything possible to ensure that the New Year’s holiday is with light, without restrictions,” utility company Ukrenergo said. It said businesses and industry had cut back to allow the additional electricity for households.
In Russia, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the southern region of Belgorod bordering Ukraine, said overnight shelling of the outskirts of Shebekino town had damaged houses, but there were no casualties.
Russian media also reported multiple Ukrainian attacks on the Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with local officials saying at least nine people were wounded.
Russia’s RIA state news agency cited a local doctor as saying six people were killed when a hospital in Donetsk was attacked on Saturday. Proxy authorities in Donetsk also said one person had been killed by Ukrainian shelling.
It was not possible to independently verify the reports.
Vatican City — Pope Francis prayed for his predecessor’s passage to heaven and again expressed thanks for a lifetime of service to the church, during New Year’s Day appearances a day after Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died in retirement at the Vatican.
St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis presided over a mid-morning New Year’s Mass, will host Benedict’s coffin starting on Monday. Thousands of faithful are expected to file by the coffin in three days of viewing.
Benedict, 95, died Saturday morning in the Vatican where he had lived since retirement. He was the first pope in centuries to resign, citing his increasing frailty.
Francis looked weary and sat with his head bowed as Mass began on the first day of the year, an occasion the Catholic church dedicates to the theme of peace.
He departed briefly from reading his homily, with its emphasis on hope and peace, to pray aloud for Benedict.
“Today we entrust to our Blessed Mother our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, so that she may accompany him in his passage from this world to God,” he said.
Pope Francis presides over the year end Vespers and the Te Deum service in St. Peter’s Basilica, on Dec. 31, 2022, in Vatican City.
Alessandra Benedetti/Corbis via Getty Images
Later, Francis delivered more remarks about the retired pontiff when he offered New Year’s greetings to thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Referring to Mary, Francis said that “in these hours, we invoke her intercession, in particular for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who, yesterday morning, left this world.”
“Let us unite all together, with one heart and one soul, in giving thanks to God for the gift of this faithful servant of the Gospel and of the church,” said Francis, speaking from a window of the Apostolic Palace to pilgrims and tourists below.
The square will be the setting for Benedict’s funeral led by Francis on Thursday morning. That rite will be a simple one, the Vatican has said, in keeping with the wishes of Benedict, who for decades as a German cardinal had served as the Church’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy before he was elected pope in 2005.
In the last years, Francis has hailed Benedict’s stunning decision to become the first pope to resign in 600 years and has made clear he’d consider such a step as an option for himself.
Hobbled by knee pain, Francis, 86, on Sunday arrived in the basilica in a wheelchair, before taking his place in a chair for the Mass, which was being celebrated by the Vatican’s secretary of state.
Francis, who has repeatedly decried the war in Ukraine and its devastation, recalled those who are victims of war, passing the year-end holidays in darkness, cold and fear.
“At the beginning of this year, we need hope, just as the Earth needs rain,” Francis said in his homily.
When addressing the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, Francis cited the “intolerable” war in Ukraine, which began in February of last year with Russia’s attacks and invasion, and in other places in the world.
Yet, Francis said, “let us not lose hope” that peace will prevail. “In the entire world, in all peoples, a cry is rising, ‘no to war, no to re-armament’ but (may) the resources go to development, health, food, education, work.”
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis prayed for his predecessor’s passage to heaven and again expressed thanks for a lifetime of service to the church, during New Year’s Day appearances a day after Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died in retirement at the Vatican.
St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis presided over a mid-morning New Year’s Mass, will host Benedict’s coffin starting on Monday. Thousands of faithful are expected to file by the coffin in three days of viewing.
Benedict, 95, died Saturday morning in the Vatican where he had lived since retirement. He was the first pope in centuries to resign, citing his increasing frailty.
Francis looked weary and sat with his head bowed as Mass began on the first day of the year, an occasion the Catholic church dedicates to the theme of peace.
He departed briefly from reading his homily, with its emphasis on hope and peace, to pray aloud for Benedict.
“Today we entrust to our Blessed Mother our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, so that she may accompany him in his passage from this world to God,” he said.
Later, Francis delivered more remarks about the retired pontiff when he offered New Year’s greetings to thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square
Referring to Mary, Francis said that “in these hours, we invoke her intercession, in particular for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who, yesterday morning, left this world.”
“Let us unite all together, with one heart and one soul, in giving thanks to God for the gift of this faithful servant of the Gospel and of the church,” said Francis, speaking from a window of the Apostolic Palace to pilgrims and tourists below.
The square will be the setting for Benedict’s funeral led by Francis on Thursday morning. That rite will be a simple one, the Vatican has said, in keeping with the wishes of Benedict, who for decades as a German cardinal had served as the Church’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy before he was elected pope in 2005.
In the last years, Francis has hailed Benedict’s stunning decision to become the first pope to resign in 600 years and has made clear he’d consider such a step as an option for himself.
Hobbled by knee pain, Francis, 86, on Sunday arrived in the basilica in a wheelchair, before taking his place in a chair for the Mass, which was being celebrated by the Vatican’s secretary of state.
Francis, who has repeatedly decried the war in Ukraine and its devastation, recalled those who are victims of war, passing the year-end holidays in darkness, cold and fear.
“At the beginning of this year, we need hope, just as the Earth needs rain,” Francis said in his homily.
When addressing the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, Francis cited the “intolerable” war in Ukraine, which began in February of last year with Russia’s attacks and invasion, and in other places in the world.
Yet, Francis said, “let us not lose hope” that peace will prevail. “In the entire world, in all peoples, a cry is rising, ‘no to war, no to re-armament’ but (may) the resources go to development, health, food, education, work.”
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Nicole Winfield contributed from the Vatican.
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More on the death of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI: https://apnews.com/hub/pope-benedict-xvi
New York City ushered in 2023 with a dazzling Saturday night spectacle in iconic Times Square, anchoring New Year’s celebrations across the United States. The night culminated with a countdown as a glowing geodesic sphere 12 feet in diameter and weighing almost six tons descended from its lofty perch atop One Times Square.
Its surface is comprised of nearly 2,700 Waterford crystals that were illuminated, officials said, by a palette of more than 16 million colors.
At the stroke of midnight, a ton of confetti rained down on revelers, glittering amid the jumbo screens, neon and pulsing lights.
Last year, a scaled-back crowd of about 15,000 in-person mask-wearing spectators watched the ball descend while basking in the lights and hoopla. Because of pandemic rules, it was far fewer than the tens of thousands of revelers who usually descend on the world-famous square.
Before the ball dropped, there were heavy thoughts about the past year and the new one.
“2023 is about resurgence — resurgence of the world after COVID-19 and after the war in Ukraine. We want it to end,” said Arjun Singh as he took in the scene at Times Square.
“New York City, I’m hoping it’s coming back and thriving after COVID,” a woman said before the festivities in Times Square.
A person wearing a hat celebrates in Times Square during the first New Year’s Eve event without restrictions since the coronavirus pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, December 31, 2022.
Reuters/Andrew Kelly
New Year’s celebrations across the globe marked an end to a year that brought war in Europe, a new chapter in the British monarchy and global worries over inflation.
The new year began in the tiny atoll nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific, then moved across Russia and New Zealand before heading deeper, time zone by time zone, through Asia and Europe and into the Americas.
At least for a day, thoughts focused on possibilities, even elusive ones like world peace, and mustering — finally — a resolve to keep the next array of resolutions.
Ukrainian soldier and mortar battery commander Taras Lukinchuk, 30, takes a photo of soldiers as he celebrates New Year’s Eve in a military rest house as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Donetsk, Ukraine, December 31, 2022.
Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
In a sign of that hope, children met St. Nicholas in a crowded metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Yet Russian attacks continued New Year’s Eve. At midnight, the streets of the capital, Kyiv, were desolate. The only sign of a new year came from local residents shouting from their balconies, “Happy New Year!” and “Glory to Ukraine!” And only half an hour into 2023, air raid sirens rang across Ukraine’s capital, followed by the sound of explosions.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported an explosion in Holosiivskyi district, and authorities reported that fragments of a missile that had been shot down had damaged a car in a central district.
In Paris, thousands celebrated on the Champs Elysees, while French President Emmanuel Macron pledged continuing support for Ukraine in a televised New Year’s address. “During the coming year, we will be unfailingly at your side,” Macron said. “We will help you until victory and we will be together to build a just and lasting peace. Count on France and count on Europe.”
Big Ben chimed as more than 100,000 revelers gathered along the River Thames to watch a spectacular fireworks show around the London Eye. The display featured a drone light display of a crown and Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait on a coin hovering in the sky, paying tribute to Britain’s longest-serving monarch who died in September.
People record a drone depiction of Britain’s late Queen Elizabeth II during New Year’s celebrations, in central London, Britain, January 1, 2023.
Reuters/Toby Melville
Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach welcomed a small crowd of a few thousand for a short fireworks display, and several Brazilian cities canceled celebrations this year due to concern about the coronavirus. The Brazilian capital’s New Year’s bash usually drew more than 2 million people to Copacabana before the pandemic.
Turkey’s most populous city, Istanbul, brought in 2023 with street festivities and fireworks. At St. Antuan Catholic Church, dozens of Christians prayed for the new year and marked former Pope Benedict XVI’s passing. The Vatican announced Benedict died Saturday at age 95.
In Australia, more than 1 million people crowded along Sydney’s waterfront for a multi-million dollar celebration based around the themes of diversity and inclusion. More than 7,000 fireworks were launched from the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and another 2,000 from the nearby Opera House.
“We have had a couple of fairly difficult years; we’re absolutely delighted this year to be able to welcome people back to the foreshores of Sydney Harbor for Sydney’s world-famous New Year’s Eve celebrations,” Stephen Gilby, the city’s producer of major events and festivals, told The Sydney Morning Herald.
Fireworks explode over Sydney Harbour during New Year’s celebrations in Sydney, Australia, January 1, 2023.
Reuters/Jaimi Joy
In Auckland, New Zealand, large crowds gathered below the Sky Tower, where a 10-second countdown to midnight preceded fireworks. The celebrations in New Zealand’s largest city returned after COVID-19 forced them to be canceled a year ago.
In China, people cautiously looked forward to 2023 after a recent easing of pandemic restrictions unleashed the virus but also signaled a return to normal life. Like many, salesperson Hong Xinyu stayed close to home over the past year in part because of curbs on travel.
“As the new year begins, we seem to see the light,” he said at a countdown show that lit up the towering structures of a former steel mill in Beijing. “We are hopeful that there will be more freedom in the future.”
Concerns about the Ukraine war and the economic shocks it has spawned across the globe were felt in Tokyo, where Shigeki Kawamura has seen better times but said he needed a free, hot meal this New Year’s.
“I hope the war will be over in Ukraine so prices will stabilize,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired off a scathing attack on Russia for a heartless wave of brutal holiday bombings, warning the “terrorist state” that it will never be forgiven for the outrageously cruel war it has launched against the people of Ukraine.
“The terrorist state will not be forgiven. And those who give orders for such strikes, and those who carry them out, will not receive a pardon. To put it mildly,” Zelenskyy warned in an address on Saturday.
He described Russian attackers as inhuman, vowing “NONhumans will lose.”
“At Easter, they made such attacks, at Christmas, at New Year… They call themselves Christians, they are very proud of their Orthodoxy. But they are following the devil. They support him and are together with him,” Zelenskyy added.
He said the only true purpose of the brutal war is so that one person — Russian President Vladimir Putin — can “remain in power until the end of his life.”
“Your leader,” Zelenskyy added, addressing Russians, “wants to show that he has the troops behind him and that he is ahead. But he is just hiding. He hides behind the troops, behind missiles, behind the walls of his residences and palaces.”
Putin “hides behind you and burns your country and your future. No one will ever forgive you for terror,” he warned Russians. “No one in the world will forgive you for this. Ukraine will never forgive.”
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s address to the nation usually is rather anodyne and backed with a soothing view of a snowy Kremlin. This year, with soldiers in the background, he lashed out at the West and Ukraine.
The conflict in Ukraine cast a long shadow as Russia entered 2023. Cities curtailed festivities and fireworks. Moscow announced special performances for soldiers’ children featuring the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus. An exiled Russian news outlet unearthed a video of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, now the Ukrainian president despised by the Kremlin, telling jokes on a Russian state television station’s New Year’s show just a decade ago.
Putin, in a nine-minute video shown on TV as each Russian time zone region counted down the final minutes of 2022 on Saturday, denounced the West for aggression and accused the countries of trying to use the conflict in Ukraine to undermine Russia.
“It was a year of difficult, necessary decisions, the most important steps toward gaining full sovereignty of Russia and powerful consolidation of our society,” he said, echoing his repeated contention that Moscow had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security.
“The West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia,” Putin said. “We have never allowed anyone and will not allow anyone to do this.”
The Kremlin has muzzled any criticism of its actions in Ukraine, shut independent media outlets and criminalized the spread of any information that differs from the official view — including diverging from calling the campaign a special military operation. But the government has faced increasingly vocal criticism from Russian hardliners, who have denounced the president as weak and indecisive and called for ramping up strikes on Ukraine.
Russia has justified the conflict by saying that Ukraine persecuted Russian speakers in the eastern Donbas region, which had been partly under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Ukraine and the West says these accusations are untrue.
“For years, the Western elites hypocritically assured all of us of their peaceful intentions, including the resolution of the most difficult conflict in the Donbas,” Putin said.
Western countries have imposed wide sanctions against Russia, and many foreign companies pulled out of the country or froze operations after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine.
“This year, a real sanctions war was declared on us. Those who started it expected the complete destruction of our industry, finances, and transport. This did not happen, because together we created a reliable margin of safety,” Putin said.
Despite such reassurances, New Year’s celebrations this year were toned down, with the usual fireworks and concert on Red Square canceled.
Some of Moscow’s elaborate holiday lighting displays made cryptic reference to the conflict. At the entrance to Gorky Park stand large lighted letters of V, Z and O – symbols that the Russian military have used from the first days of the military operation to identify themselves.
“Will it make me a patriot and go to the front against my Slavic brothers? No, it will not,” park visitor Vladimir Ivaniy said.
Moscow also announced plans to hold special pageant performances for the children of soldiers serving in Ukraine.
The Russian news outlet Meduza, declared a foreign agent in Russia and which now operates from Latvia, on Saturday posted a video of Zelenskyy, who was a hugely popular comedian before becoming Ukraine’s president in 2019, performing in a New Year’s Day show on Russian state television in 2013.
Zelenskyy jokes that the inexpensive sparkling wine Sovietskoe Shampanskoye, a popular tipple on New Year’s, is in the record books as a paradox because “the drink exists but the country doesn’t.”
Adding to the irony, the show’s host was Maxim Galkin, a comedian who fled the country in 2022 after criticizing the military operation in Ukraine.
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Elise Morton contributed to this report from London.
WASHINGTON — A provision in the recently signed defense spending bill mandates that the United States work to ease Ukraine’s debt burden at the International Monetary Fund, which could create tensions at the world’s lender-of-last-resort over one of its biggest borrowers.
The National Defense Authorization Act requires American representatives to each global development bank, including the IMF, where the U.S. is the largest stakeholder, to use “ the voice, vote, and influence ” of the U.S. in seeking to assemble a voting bloc of countries that would change each institution’s debt service relief policy regarding Ukraine.
Among other things, the U.S. is tasked with forcing the IMF to reexamine and potentially end its surcharge policy on Ukrainian loans. Surcharges are added fees on loans imposed on countries that are heavily indebted to the IMF.
The U.S. interest in changing the policy comes as it has distributed tens of billions for Ukrainian military and humanitarian aid since the Russian invasion began in February. Most recently, Ukraine will receive $44.9 billion in aid from the U.S. as part of a $1.7 trillion government-wide spending bill.
Inevitably, some U.S. grant money is spent servicing IMF loans.
“I can see why the Senate would want to relax the surcharge for Ukraine,” Peter Garber, an economist who most recently worked at the global markets research division of Deutsche Bank, wrote in an email. “As the principal bankroller of economic aid for Ukraine, the US would not want to deliver funds only to have them go right to the coffers of the IMF.”
Economists Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University and Kevin P. Gallagher at Boston University wrote in February about surcharges, saying that “forcing excessive repayments lowers the productive potential of the borrowing country, but also harms creditors” and requires borrowers “to pay more at exactly the moment when they are most squeezed from market access in any other form.”
Other economists say the fees provide an incentive for members with large outstanding balances to repay their loans promptly.
Even with the aid, the beleaguered Ukrainian economy is expected to shrink by 35 percent, according to the World Bank, and the country will owe roughly $360 million in surcharge fees alone to the IMF by 2023.
The effort to wrangle the IMF’s 24 directors, who are elected by member countries or by groups of countries, to end the surcharges may not be so easy.
Just before Christmas, the directors decided to maintain the surcharge policy. They said in a Dec. 20 statement that most directors “were open to exploring possible options for providing temporary surcharge relief,” but others “noted that the average cost of borrowing from the Fund remains significantly below market rates.”
Prominent economists studying the war’s impacts pointed out in a December report — “Rebuilding Ukraine: Principles and Policies,” by the Paris- and London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research — that “some significant voting members may have interests that are not aligned with having Ukraine succeed economically.”
Securing consistent financing to Ukraine could become harder as the war rages on. There are growing fears of a global recession and concerns that European allies are struggling to deliver on their financing promises. In addition, the GOP is set this coming week to take control of the House, with the top Republican, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, saying his party will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said the surcharge issue affects not just Ukraine, but also other countries facing debt crises. Among them: Pakistan, hit by flooding and humanitarian crises, as well as Argentina, Ecuador, and Egypt, who together are on the hook for billions in surcharges.
“There is no logic to the IMF imposing surcharges on countries already in crisis,” Weisbrot said, “which inevitably happens because the surcharges are structured to hit countries already facing financial problems.”
He said the issue will become more urgent as Ukraine’s debt grows and the war drags on.
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, said “these surcharges should certainly be eliminated,” adding: “The IMF undercuts its core lender-of-last-resort role.”
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — For millions of Ukrainians, many of them under Russian bombardment and grappling with power and water shortages, New Year’s celebrations will be muted as Russia’s 10-month war rumbles on with no end in sight. Explosions rang out across the country as a new wave of russian attacks was reported Saturday.
But for some families, the new year is nevertheless a chance to reunite, however briefly, after months apart.
At Kyiv’s central railway station on Saturday morning, Mykyta, still in his uniform, gripped a bouquet of pink roses tightly as he waited on platform 9 for his wife Valeriia to arrive from Poland. He hadn’t seen her in six months.
“It actually was really tough, you know, to wait so long,” he told The Associated Press after hugging and kissing Valeriia.
Nearby, another soldier, Vasyl Khomko, 42, joyously met his daughter Yana and wife Galyna who have been living in Slovakia due to the war, but returned to Kyiv to spend New Year’s Eve together.
The mood contrasted starkly with that from 10 months ago when families were torn apart by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian soldier Vasyl Khomko, 42, hugs his daughter Yana as she arrives at the train station in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022. Khomko’s wife and daughter have been living in Slovakia due to the war but returned to Kyiv to spend New Year’s Eve together. (AP Photo/Roman Hrytsyna)
Back in February, fathers, husbands and sons had to stay behind as their wives, mothers and daughters boarded trains with small children seeking safety outside the country. Scenes of tearful goodbyes seared television screens and front pages of newspaper across the world.
But on the last day of the year marked by the brutal war, many returned to the capital to spend New Year’s Eve with their loved ones, despite the ongoing Russian attacks.
Multiple explosions were heard across the country Saturday, and air defenses were activated in several regions. One of the explosions in Kyiv occurred in a residential area, among the multi-story buildings of Solomianskyi district. One person was killed and three wounded, said the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
As Russian attacks continue to target power supplies leaving millions without electricity, no big celebrations are expected and a curfew will be in place as the clock rings in the new year. But for most Ukrainians being together with their families is a luxury.
Valeriia first sought refuge from the conflict in Spain but later moved to Poland. Asked what their New Year’s Eve plans were, she answered simply: “Just to be together.”
The couple declined not to share their family name for security reasons as Mykyta has been fighting on the front lines in both southern and eastern Ukraine.
Dmytro receives Tatyana and their 5-months-old son Volodymyr at the train station as they arrive to spend New Year’s together in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Roman Hrytsyna)
On platform 8, another young couple reunited. University student Arseniia Kolomiiets, 23, has been living in Italy. Despite longing to see her boyfriend Daniel Liashchenko in Kyiv, Kolomiiets was scared of Russian missiles and drone attacks.
“He was like, ‘Please come! Please come! Please come!’” she recalled. “I decided that (being) scared is one part, but being with beloved ones on the holidays is the most important part. So, I overcome my fear and here I am now.”
Although they have no electricity at home, Liashchenko said they were looking forward to welcoming 2023 together with his family and their cat.
In an attempt to ensure residents have light during their celebrations, the regional government of Ukraine’s southwestern Odesa province is planning to limit the work of the most energy-intensive industries on Dec. 31 and Jan 1.
Regional head Maksym Marchenko made the announcement on Friday via Telegram, and said that power engineers in the province had used all means possible to “eliminate the consequences” of Russia’s barrage of attacks on Ukraine on Thursday and reinstate the power supply.
In Kyiv, recent attacks have left many on edge, unsure about whether the skies will be peaceful on the last day of the year.
“We are hoping there will be no surprises today,” said Natalya Kontonenko who had traveled from Finland. It was the first time she had seen her brother Serhii Kontonenko since the full-scale invasion began on Feb. 24. Serhii and other relatives traveled from Mykolaiv to Kyiv to meet Natalya.
“We are not concerned about the electricity, because we are together and that I think is the most important,” he said.
Rescuers work at a site of a building damaged during a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine on Dec. 31, 2022.
Gleb Garanich | Reuters
Numerous blasts were heard in Kyiv and in other places around Ukraine and air raid sirens wailed across the country in the first couple hours after midnight on New Year’s Day.
As the sirens wailed, some people in Kyiv shouted from their balconies, “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes!” Reuters witnesses reported.
Fragments from a missile destroyed by Ukrainian air defense systems damaged a car in the capital’s center, but preliminarily there were no wounded or casualties, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Kyiv’s city military administration said that 23 Russian-launched “air objects” had been destroyed.
The attacks came minutes after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy New Year message of wishes of victory for his country in the war that is in its 11th month, with no end in sight.
Blasts continued to be heard after that, with no immediate reports of damages, Reuters witnesses reported.
There were also unofficial reports of blasts in the southern region of Kherson and the northern Zhytomyr region.
The attacks followed a barrage of more than 20 cruise missiles fired at targets across on Ukraine on Saturday in what Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets called “Terror on New Year’s Eve.”
Kyiv city and region officials said on the Telegram messaging app that air defense systems were working. Oleksiy Kuleba, the governor of the Kyiv region, said the region was being attacked by drones. It was not immediately known whether any targets were hit.
Separately, Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the southern Russian region of Belgorod bordering with Ukraine, said that as a result of overnight shelling of the outskirts of Shebekino town, there were damages to houses, but no casualties.
Ukraine has never publicly claimed responsibility for any attacks inside Russia but has called them “karma” for Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin used his New Year’s address to the nation to accuse Western countries of aggression and trying to use the conflict in Ukraine to undermine Moscow.
Putin made the video address, shown on state television on Saturday in each of Russia’s 11 time zones, from a military headquarters with soldiers in the background, a sharp departure from his previous practice of recording the message against the backdrop of the snowy Kremlin.
“It was a year of difficult, necessary decisions, the most important steps toward gaining full sovereignty of Russia and powerful consolidation of our society,” he said, echoing his repeated contention that Moscow had no choice but to send troops into Ukraine because it threatened Russia’s security.
“The West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia,” Putin said. “We have never allowed anyone and will not allow anyone to do this.”
The Kremlin has muzzled any criticism of its actions in Ukraine, shut independent media outlets and criminalized the spread of any information that differs from the official view — including diverging from calling the campaign a special military operation. But the government has faced increasingly vocal criticism from Russian hardliners, who have denounced the president as weak and indecisive and called for ramping up strikes on Ukraine.
Russia has justified the conflict by saying that Ukraine persecuted Russian speakers in the eastern Donbas region, which had been partly under the control of Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Ukraine and the West says these accusations are untrue.
“For years, the Western elites hypocritically assured all of us of their peaceful intentions, including the resolution of the most difficult conflict in the Donbas,” Putin said.
Western countries have imposed wide sanctions against Russia and many foreign companies pulled out of the country or froze operations after Russia sent in troops.
“This year, a real sanctions war was declared on us. Those who started it expected the complete destruction of our industry, finances, and transport. This did not happen, because together we created a reliable margin of safety,” Putin said.
LONDON — Those at the forefront of the U.K.’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine joined Queen guitarist Brian May and a fashion designer dubbed “the mother of the miniskirt” on the country’s New Year’s Honors list on Friday.
Artists, community leaders and members of England’s award-winning women’s soccer team were also among the more than 1,100 people included in this year’s list, the first to be signed off by King Charles III.
May, who is also an animal welfare campaigner, was appointed a knight bachelor for his services to music and charity. The former Queen guitarist, who also holds a doctorate in astrophysics, said he regarded his new title as “a kind of commission to do the things one would expect a knight to do — to fight for justice, to fight for people who don’t have any voice.”
Mary Quant, the 92-year-old designer best known for popularizing the miniskirt during the 1960s, received the U.K.’s top honor for her services to fashion. Quant’s appointment to the Order of the Companions of Honor, a special status held by no more than 65 people at any one time, came seven years after she was made a dame — the female equivalent of a knight — in recognition of her designs.
Artist Grayson Perry, known for his tapestries and ceramics, was also knighted for services to the arts.
Elsewhere, diplomats shaping the U.K.’s response to the war in Ukraine were recognized, with damehoods for the ambassadors to both Kyiv and Moscow, and a British Empire Medal (BEM) for a campaigner who led donation drives for Ukrainian refugees.
Nanny Louenna Hood, 37, who raised more than 160,000 pounds through online auctions, said she was “completely stunned” to be recognized.
“I started the campaign, but I would never have been able to do it without the community,” she said.
Half of this year’s honors went to women, including members of the England soccer team that won the 2022 Women’s European Championship and the first woman to lead a major U.K bank.
England captain Leah Williamson received an OBE, while teammates Lucy Bronze, Beth Mead and Ellen White were all made MBEs.
Alison Rose, the chief executive of banking group NatWest and the first woman to run one of the U.K.’s largest banks, was also awarded a damehood.
U.K. monarchs have awarded honors as part of orders of chivalry since the Middle Ages. In modern times, nominations are submitted to the government’s Cabinet Office and vetted by a committee before being passed on to the prime minister and the monarch for approval.
Others honored this year included those campaigning for environmental and climate change action, youth engagement and combating discrimination. Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who received a knighthood, was among several Jewish community leaders to be recognized.
