Ukraine says five killed by Russian missiles, drones

| January 3, 2024

Russia has fired scores of missiles and drones at the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the northeastern city of Kharkiv, killing at least five civilians, wounding dozens and causing widespread damage, officials say.

The third successive day of air strikes on Ukraine followed a warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that a Ukrainian air attack on the Russian city of Belgorod, which officials said killed 25 civilians, would “not go unpunished”.

Smoke belched out of the charred side of a high-rise residential building where Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said missile debris had come crashing down metres away, leaving a crater.

He said an elderly woman had died in an ambulance after being wounded at the site and that 43 other people were hurt.

Emergency services said a body had also been recovered on the eighth floor of the damaged building.

“Russia will answer for every life (that it has) taken away,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messenger.

Russia stepped up its missile and drone strikes on Ukraine on December 29 when it launched its largest air attack of the war, killing at least 39 people.

Almost two years after a full-scale Russian invasion, it holds swathes of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, and there is no end in sight to the war.

Russia depicts a Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in mid-2023 as a failure, and front lines have changed little in recent months.

Klitschko said gas pipelines had been damaged in Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district, and electricity and water had been cut off in several districts of the capital.

Private energy company DTEK was working to restore power but the outages brought back memories of last winter when Russia pounded the energy grid with missiles, causing frequent power cuts and plunging millions into darkness.

Ukrainian air defences, boosted by supplies from its foreign allies, downed all 10 incoming “Kinzhal” missiles fired in the latest attack as well as 59 of the 70 cruise missiles and all three Kalibr cruise missiles, army chief General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on its allies to accelerate supplies of air defence systems, long-range missiles and combat drones.

In Kharkiv, a 91-year-old woman was killed in a missile attack that left a metres-deep crater near damaged residential buildings, Oleh Synehubov, Kharkiv’s regional governor, said.

Forty-five people were wounded in the attack on the city centre at about 7.30am, he said.

The volley of missiles was preceded by a drone attack that Ukraine said it had repelled hours earlier.

A married couple were killed and 11 people were hurt in the area outside Kyiv, the regional administration said.

A dozen residential buildings and at least 60 cars were also damaged, it said.

Regional officials in Belgorod, near Russia’s border with Ukraine, said one man was killed and seven people were wounded on Tuesday in a Ukrainian attack on the city and region.

Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the man was killed by a missile that landed next to his car, and that four people had been wounded at a car market.

In all, officials said Russian air defences had shot down 17 Ukrainian “air targets” including rockets fired from multiple missile launchers, and that a number of houses and cars had been damaged.

Reuters could not independently verify the Russian and Ukrainian reports.