Rescuers work at a site of a constructing damaged during a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine on Dec. 31, 2022.
Gleb Garanich | Reuters
Russia fired greater than 20 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine on Saturday, killing a minimum of one person in Kyiv, in attacks President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said showed Moscow was in league with the devil.
The second barrage of major Russian missile attacks in three days badly damaged a Kyiv hotel and a residential constructing. Energy Minister German Galushchenko on Facebook said the strikes had not caused serious damage to the national power system.
Russia has been attacking vital Ukraine infrastructure since October with barrages of missiles and drones, causing sweeping power blackouts because the cold weather bites.
Zelenskyy speaking in a video address noted that Russia had also launched attacks at Easter and Christmas.
“They call themselves Christians … but they’re for the devil. They’re for him and with him,” he said.
A minimum of a dozen people were injured within the attacks. A Japanese journalist was among the many wounded and brought to a hospital, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, later said it had canceled emergency power outages in Kyiv and the encompassing region.
Zelenskyy in comments addressed to Russian speakers said President Vladimir Putin was destroying Russia’s future.
“Nobody will forgive you for terror. Nobody on the earth will forgive you for this. Ukraine won’t forgive,” he said, reiterating calls for allies to produce more anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems.
Army chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said air defenses shot down 12 incoming cruise missiles, including six across the Kyiv region, five within the Zhytomyrskiy region and one within the Khmeltnytskiy region.
The cruise missiles had been launched from strategic bombers over the Caspian Sea tons of of miles away and from land-based launchers, he said on Telegram.
“Russia’s mass missile attack is deliberately targeting residential areas, not even our energy infrastructure,” Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter after the attack.
“War criminal Putin ‘celebrates’ Latest Yr by killing people,” Kuleba said, calling for Russia to be deprived of its everlasting seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets described the attack as “terror on Latest Yr’s Eve.”
Nationwide blasts
Other cities across Ukraine also got here under fire. Within the southern region of Mykolaiv, local governor Vitaliy Kim on television said that six people had been wounded.
Kim in a separate post on Telegram said Russia had targeted civilians with the strikes, something Moscow has previously denied.
“In response to today’s tendencies, the occupiers are striking not only critical (infrastructure) … in lots of cities (they’re targeting) simply residential areas, hotels, garages, roads.”
Within the western city of Khmelnytskyi, two people were wounded in a drone attack, Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. He also reported a strike within the southern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia, which Tymoshenko said had damaged residential buildings.
Ukraine’s defense ministry responded on Telegram by saying: “With each latest missile attack on civilian infrastructure, increasingly Ukrainians are convinced of the necessity to fight until the whole collapse of Putin’s regime.”
Curfews starting from 7 p.m. to midnight remained in place across Ukraine, making celebrations for the beginning of 2023 unimaginable in public spaces.
Several regional governors posted messages on social media warning residents not to interrupt restrictions on Latest Yr’s Eve.
