Russia launches record drone storm over Ukraine to start the year and Putin promises more strikes

Russia has dropped a record storm of drone bombs on Ukraine to usher in the new year. kyiv says it has intercepted most of the 90 Iranian-made unmanned aircraft. The aggression comes as air attacks on Ukrainian cities have intensified with a massive bombing by Moscow forces on Friday and Ukraine's response on Saturday on Belgorod and other Russian cities. The head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, who launched the full-scale war almost two years ago to subjugate Ukraine and promising to “liberate” its citizens, assured this Monday that he does not want to fight “forever”, but that it will only put an end to large-scale invasion on their own terms. The Russian leader has warned that the bombings on the cities of southwestern Russia “will not go unpunished.” Shortly after, the sirens warning of air raids sounded again throughout Ukraine.

With his comments during a visit to a military hospital, Putin has sought to show that the war effort, which has caused huge casualties among his troops, is in Russia's favor. However, despite the failure of the recent Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Kremlin forces have not made any notable progress in 2023 on the ground either. “We have no desire to fight forever. However, we are not going to give up our positions either,” said Putin, who has tried to downplay the severe inflation that affects the pockets of citizens in Russia, isolated from global markets. The Russian leader believes that the West will eventually leave Ukraine alone and is working to achieve this in his international relations, while sending contradictory signals that he would be willing to freeze the conflict. Something that Western analysts and diplomats consider another trick of the Russian leader.

One dead and twenty injured in Odessa

In Ukraine, a young man died this Monday in Odessa as a result of swarms of drones launched by Russia after the remains of the aircraft intercepted by the anti-aircraft defense hit his house. In addition, there are around twenty injured in the Black Sea port city, one of the most affected. In Donetsk, a city occupied by Russia in the Donbas war that began in 2014, the occupation authorities assured that a Ukrainian attack caused four deaths and 13 injuries.

The invaded country prepares for a long war with the uncertainty of whether Western support will prevail. In his New Year's speech, President Volodymyr Zelensky sent signals to citizens to maintain resistance and called for doing everything to support the war effort, as the Government prepares to expand conscription. “Each of us fought, worked, waited, helped, lived and wished this year,” the Ukrainian leader said in a 20-minute speech.

In Russia, where it is also tradition for the president to give a year-end speech, state television broadcast a short intervention by Putin in which he did not mention Ukraine or what Moscow calls a “special military operation.” “We are a country, a big family,” he said. The Russian leader tried to surround himself with a halo of normality and appeared with the traditional image of the Kremlin in the background, in contrast to the previous year's speech, in which he was seen surrounded by uniformed soldiers, to try to remove the impact of the war in Russia; also the memory of the failed mutiny of Wagner's boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died at the end of August in an explosion on the plane in which he was traveling. Putin had promised revenge for the riot.

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