Ukrainian authorities said four people were killed and 50 injured in Russian attacks shortly before and just after New Year’s Eve, which Moscow said targeted drone manufacturing facilities.

According to the latest report by local and regional authorities, the attacks were aimed at the capital Kyiv and seven other regions of Ukraine.

AFP journalists in Kyiv heard around 10 explosions on Saturday afternoon and then a few minutes after New Year’s. In the center of Kyiv, a rocket pierced the facade of a hotel.

On Saturday, the Russian army shelled several Ukrainian cities, firing 20 missiles, including from bombers, 12 of which were shot down by Ukrainian air defense, said the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny. “With the help of Tu-95MS strategic bombers from the Caspian Sea and ground-based missile systems, the enemy launched more than 20 cruise missiles. Our forces and air defense equipment destroyed 12 missiles,” Valery Zaluzhny reported in Telegram.

The Russian military said that strikes on several Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, on New Year’s Eve targeted drone manufacturing companies and were carried out to counter planned “terrorist attacks.”

“On December 31, 2022, the armed forces of Russia carried out a long-range, high-precision air strike on the facilities of the Ukrainian defense and industrial complex, which are engaged in the production of attack drones, which are used to carry out terrorist attacks against Russia,” the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation reported on Sunday. in his daily report.

The former spokeswoman for the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, published a photo on Twitter in which she claims that the shelling was also aimed at the regional pediatric hospital in Kherson, where her mother works. The attack happened a few minutes before the New Year, but luckily the nurses saved the children, no one was hurt, but almost all other buildings in the city were damaged.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in his New Year’s address to the military on Saturday that their victory in Ukraine was “inevitable” after more than ten months of fighting. “In the coming year, I want to wish everyone health, courage, reliable and loyal comrades (…) Our victory, like the new year, is inevitable,” he said in the video broadcast of his ministry.

However, Sergei Shoigu admitted that 2022 was marked by “serious challenges” and that the “military-political situation” was “difficult”, given that the Russian offensive on Ukraine, launched in February, had suffered serious setbacks in recent months. . The counteroffensive of Ukrainian troops forced the Russian army to retreat from the Kharkiv region in the northeast of the country and the city of Kherson on the Dnieper in the south of the country.

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