Day: January 2, 2023

Kyiv claims responsibility for deadly attack on Russian-controlled city of Makiivka; Russia is planning a protracted campaign of drone attacks to ‘exhaust’ Ukraine, Zelenskiy warns

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Ukraine has claimed responsibility for the New Year’s Day attack on a complex in the Russian-occupied city of Makiivka. “On December 31, up to 10 units of enemy military equipment of various types were destroyed and damaged” in the town of Makiivka in the eastern region of Donetsk, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement. It said the human “losses” were still being established.

The attack on Makiivka killed dozens of recently mobilised troops sent by Moscow, in what could be one of the deadliest known incidents involving Russian conscripts so far. Ukraine’s military command said up to 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the incident in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, but this claim was not independently verified. Russia’s defence ministry said 63 Russian soldiers died when Ukraine hit “a temporary deployment facility” with four US-supplied Himars missiles.

Satellite images taken by US-based company Planet Labs that purportedly showing the aftermath of the strike on Makiivka have circulated online, showing the building that allegedly housed the Russian troops before and after it was hit. The images, dated 2 January, show a building almost completely razed to the ground. Unverified footage posted online of the aftermath of the blast also showed a huge building reduced to smoking rubble.

Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and surrounding areas early on Monday morning. Debris from a destroyed drone hit Kyiv’s northeastern Desnianskiy district, wounding a 19-year-old man who was later taken to hospital, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said. Energy infrastructure facilities in the city were damaged, causing power and heating outages.

Ukraine claims to have destroyed 40 Russian drones heading for Kyiv on Sunday night, with 15 destroyed over neighbouring regions, three in the Kyiv region and 22 directly over the capital. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the country’s forces have shot down more than 80 drones since the start of 2023.

Russia is planning a protracted campaign of attacks with Iranian drones to “exhaust” Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned in his Monday night address. “It is probably banking on exhaustion. Exhausting our people, our anti-aircraft defences, our energy.” Ukraine, he said, had to “act and do everything so that the terrorists’ fail in their aim, as all their others have failed.”

Zelenskiy said he expects the first tranche of EU macro-financial aid to arrive in January after speaking to European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen on Monday. Zelenskiy thanked Von der Leyen for her support, adding the €18bn ($19bn) worth of financial assistance “is extremely important right now, when Russia is trying to gather new forces for aggression”.

Ukraine and the European Union will hold a summit in Kyiv on 3 February to discuss financial and military support, Zelenskiy’s office said in a statement on Monday. “The parties discussed expected results of the next Ukraine-EU summit to be held on 3 February in Kyiv and agreed to intensify preparatory work,” the statement read.

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