Russia attacked several regions of Ukraine, including Odessa (south) and Lviv (west) on New Year's Eve for 11 hours with a record number of drones.where at least one person died and a port terminal and the university where the nationalist and Nazi collaborator Stepán Bandera studied were damaged.
“A powerful massive drone attack lasted 11 hours. “The kamikaze drones were launched in the afternoon and the anti-aircraft defense finished its work around 04:00 local time,” the Southern Defense Forces said on their Telegram channel.
The Ukrainian Air Force stressed that on New Year's Eve, “the enemy used a record number of attack unmanned aerial vehicles of the Shahed type” Iranians.
Total, Russia launched 90 drones and four S-300 anti-aircraft guided missiles over Ukraineas well as three Kh-31P anti-radar missiles and one Kh-59, he indicated.
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The missiles attacked Kharkov (east), Kherson and Zaporizhia (south), while the drones targeted Mikolayiv (south), Vinitsia (central-west), Dnipropetrovsk (center), Kherson and the Kirovohrad region (center), in addition to Lviv (west).
Ukrainian air defenses shot down 87 of the 90 drones, according to the Air Force.
Lviv National University of Nature Management, after a drone attack.
The southern Defense Forces explained that Russia's obvious priority in the south was the port infrastructure of Odessa, where a fire broke out in one of the port terminals, which was quickly extinguished.
Around midnight, Russian forces launched drones over residential areas where citizens were going to celebrate the New Year, As a result, debris from the downed unmanned vehicles damaged at least three private and agricultural buildings, and one person died.
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This is a 15-year-old teenager, according to the head of the State Administration of the Odessa Region, Oleg Kiper.
The mayor of Lviv, Andrí Sadovi, in turn denounced that Russia attacked two objects of national memory in the city: the Dubliany University where Stepan Bandera studied 100 years ago and the museum dedicated to the commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) Roman Shukhevich .
The mayor explained that the museum was completely destroyed.
Ukrainian firefighters inspect the destroyed Shukhevich Museum building.
“Thank you all very much for your combative work. A year ago on New Year's Eve, the defenders of the sky destroyed 45 Shahed drones. Today there were 87! We defend the sky! Together towards victory!” he wrote on Telegram. Commander-in-Chief of the FAU, Lieutenant General Miloka Oleschuk.
In his New Year's Eve message, the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky assured that “next year the enemy will feel the wrath of national production” of weapons and that the country will have at least one million FPV drones, piloted with remote vision.
“We will use everything generously. On land, in the sky and, of course, in the sea,” the president promised.
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Putin warns that the attack on Belgorod will not go unpunished
The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, for his part, in his first public reaction to the Ukrainian attack last Saturday against the border city of Belgorod, which left 25 dead and more than a hundred injured, warned that this will not go unpunished.
“It was a direct attack against the civilian population. It was certainly a terrorist attack. It cannot be described any other way,” the Kremlin chief said in a meeting with military personnel at a hospital on the outskirts of Moscow.
He assured that the attack on Belgorod “will not go unpunished, one hundred percent, there can be no doubt” and that he himself “is boiling over everything,” but he stressed that Russia responds by hitting military targets.
“It's what we do. We are doing it. We attack with high-precision weapons the places where decisions are made, concentrations of military, mercenaries and other similar centers, military objectives, first of all. And they are sensitive attacks. That's how we will continue doing it,” Putin said.
He stressed that on the battlefield the initiative is “practically” in the hands of the Russian military, who – he said – have weapons that “no army in the world has.”
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The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
“We do not want to fight forever, but we are not willing to give up our positions either,” said the Russian president, who assured that Russia also wants to end the conflict as soon as possible, as long as it is on its terms.
He insisted that the essence of the problem does not lie in Ukraine, “but in those who, using Ukraine, try to destroy Russia. And that is ruled out, absolutely ruled out.”
“Ukraine itself is not our enemy, but those who want to destroy the Russian state, those who want to achieve, as they say, the strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield, and they are mainly in the West,” he explained.
At the same time, Putin indicated that there are those in the West who sympathize with Russia, but there are also “so-called elites, who consider the existence of Russia in its current quality and its current size to be unacceptable.”
EFE
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