Ukraine-Russia: Kyiv residents warned to stay in shelters amid missile threat
Kyiv residents have been warned to take shelter after its military reported more missiles were headed for the city following a firm message from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Ukraine’s air force said multiple missiles were flying towards the capital Kyiv on Tuesday, shortly after nationwide air alerts were raised due to a threat from Russian bombers.
A series of more than 10 loud explosions were heard in Kyiv on Tuesday morning, shaking buildings in the centre.
The city’s military administration said fragments of downed rockets had fallen in several districts including on residential buildings.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said power had gone out in several areas of the capital.
“Kyiv - stay in shelters. Many missiles heading in your direction,” the air force said on Telegram.
The air force said Russians were launching Kinzhal missiles and more were heading towards the capital.
Strikes have hit the northeastern city of Kharkiv, said the head of the military administration, Oleg Sinegubov.
PUTIN’S NEW YEAR’S EVE MESSAGE
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow would “never back down” in his New Year’s Eve address, praising his country’s military personnel without explicitly mentioning the conflict in Ukraine.
“We have repeatedly proved that we are able to solve the most difficult tasks and will never retreat, because there is no force that can separate us,” Putin said.
Meanwhile, Kyiv said it had destroyed 21 of 49 Iranian-made drones fired after Russia vowed to retaliate for what it called a “terrorist attack” on a border city that left 24 dead.
The Ukrainian air force said the “Shahed” drones were particularly targeted at “the front line of defence, as well as at civilian, military and infrastructure facilities in the front-line territories”.
Six guided missiles had also targeted the northeastern city of Kharkiv, Kyiv said in a statement on Telegram, without specifying whether they had hit their targets.
Oleg Sinegubov, the head of Kharkiv’s military administration, said there had been 28 civilians wounded in the attack on the city, including two teenagers and a foreign citizen.
Residential buildings, offices and cafes were hit in the latest overnight attacks, said Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov.
“On the eve of the New Year, Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared,” he said.
It comes as Putin ordered the largest aerial attack of the Ukraine war and sent “revenge squads” to hunt down collaborators in retaliation for the sinking of a Russian warship in Crimea.
POLAND EMERGENCY MEETING OVER MISSILE ATTACK
Poland convened an emergency meeting of its National Security Council after a “Russian missile” breached its airspace for three minutes and 40km during the barrage. NATO is monitoring the situation that, if confirmed, could threaten to trigger the alliance’s collective defence principle and drag Europe, the US and the UK into the conflict.
At least 30 were killed and 151 more injured during the 18-hour onslaught of about 158 cruise and ballistic missiles that was described as the biggest attack from the air since Russia’s invasion almost two years ago.
The death toll is expected to rise, despite Ukraine military chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi saying 87 of the missiles and 27 of the Shahed-type suicide drones were intercepted by air defences.
“We have never seen so many targets on our monitors at once,” said Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, with Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk adding it was “the most massive aerial attack” since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed: “Today Russia hit us with almost everything it has in its arsenal”.
PUTIN SENDS ‘REVENGE SQUADS’ TO HUNT COLLABORATORS
A “completely furious” Putin also sent revenge squads into Crimea to hunt for collaborators who leaked the location of the Novocherkask warship, according to pro-Kyiv Crimean Tatar guerrilla group Atesh.
The warship was destroyed this week by a British Storm Shadow cruise missile fired from a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-24 jet.
The missile attack lit up Ukraine with dead and injured reported in Kyiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Odessa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Konotop, and Cherkasy.
Among the civilian targets struck were a maternity ward, shopping centres, metro station, apartment buildings, private houses and warehouses.
WORLD MUST WAKE UP: UKRAINE
Foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said the scale of the attack should wake the world up, while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used “nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal”.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia used about 18 Tu-95 strategic bombers to launch Kh-101 and Kh-555 missiles, while radar also picked up Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, Iskander-M ballistic missiles, and other cruise missiles in the attack.
“We will surely respond to terrorist strikes,” Zelenskyy said.
Kyiv struck back by firing three US-made Harm anti-radiation rockets into the Russian territory of Belgorod, according to the Kremlin, which said they were shot down by Russian anti-air defences.
The Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said 50 strikes launched on Ukraine in the past seven days targeted “facilities of the military-industrial complex, military air bases, arsenals and depots of munitions, weapons, sea drones and fuel”.
US AND UK CONDEMN ATTACK
The US and the UK condemned the Russian attack, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowing to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes”.
NATO Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said he spoke to Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and that they would remain in contact until “the facts are established”.
“NATO remains vigilant,” he said.
Polish witnesses saw an object “moving at great speed” above the village of Dolhobyczow in Lublin Voivodeship, less than 5km from the Ukrainian border, not far from where a Ukrainian anti-air missile killed two people last year.
UK Secretary of Defence announced the supply of 200 air defence missiles in response to “Putin’s latest wave of murderous air strikes”.
“Putin is testing Ukraine’s defences and the West’s resolve, hoping that he can clutch victory from the jaws of defeat,” he said.
EXPLOSIONS ROCK UKRAINE CITIES
Russia has launched a wave of missile strikes across Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, as authorities raised a nationwide air alert.
The overnight attacks early on Friday came days after Ukraine struck a Russian warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general said the latest wave of Russian strikes had killed at least 16 people and injured almost a hundred.
Explosions were reported in Kyiv, city mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on Telegram.
Missiles also struck at least five other Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv in the northeast, Lviv in the country’s west as well as Odessa in the south, the cities’ mayors and police said.
“Today, at five o’clock in the morning, the fascists’ followers hit the peaceful city with S-300 missiles. 10 explosions rang out in Kharkiv. Specialised services quickly arrived at strike spots,” Kharkiv region police said.
The number of missiles fired by Russia in one day over Ukraine was a new record, according to a Ukrainian air force spokesman.
“This is the most massive missile attack in general,” Yuriy Ignat told AFP, adding that this tally excluded the first days of the war launched in February last year that saw “constant and uninterrupted” strikes.
Overnight attacks were also reported in Sumy and Konotop.
In southern Odessa, a high-rise building caught fire after being struck by debris from a downed drone, the city’s mayor said.
“As a result of another enemy attack, one of the high-rise buildings was damaged. The fire was promptly extinguished,” mayor Gennady Trukhanov said in a social media post.
The attacks came after Kremlin on Tuesday acknowledged a Ukrainian attack had damaged a warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia in what Ukraine and its Western allies called a major setback for the Russian navy.
UKRAINE TAUNTS RUSSIA
Ukraine has said its air force destroyed the Novocherkassk landing ship, with President Volodymyr Zelensky joking on social media that the vessel had now joined “the Russian underwater Black Sea fleet”.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu informed “about the damage to our large landing ship” to President Vladimir Putin in “a very detailed report”.
The country’s defence ministry said that the ship was damaged by guided aerial missiles.
Ukraine’s military said its air force destroyed the Russian naval ship in a missile attack on the eastern Crimean port.
STAR JAILED AFTER NAKED WAR PARTY
The organiser of an “almost naked” Moscow rave said she’s ready for her “public execution” after a popular rapper was jailed for wearing only a sock to the two-day rave.
The star-studded party at Moscow’s infamous Mutabor nightclub, including Vladimir Putin’s “Goddaughter”, has sparked outrage throughout Russia as the body count in Ukraine continues to grow.
Salacious videos and images of the raunchy party show Moscow’s elites and VIPs dressed, or various stages of undress, in scantily clad lingerie, with rapper Vacio wearing only a precision guided Balenciaga sock to the soiree.
Real name Nikolai Vasilyev, the singer was fined $A3,200 and given 15 days in prison for petty hooliganism and “gay propaganda” after Putin ordered a crackdown on the “debauched” revellers.
The 32-year-old influencer who organised the party, Nastya Ivleeva, issued a tearful apology and faces up to five years in jail and $A2million in fines.
“They say Russia can forgive. If that’s true, I’d really like to ask you, the people, for a second chance,” she said in a video.
“If the answer is no, then I’m ready for my public execution.
“But I will not dodge [my punishment] and I am ready for any outcome.”
The TV presenter, making two apologies in two days, said she had “flown off the handle” by throwing the “almost naked” party when hundreds of thousands of Russians were being killed and injured in Ukraine.
Over 20 people filed a class lawsuit against Ivleeva demanding she pay a billion roubles ($A16.3m) to a charity supporting the assault on Ukraine.
Her apology left some unmoved, including influential state television presenter Vladimir Solovyov.
“You want a second chance? Bring our guys heaters and drones in Tokmak” on the southern Ukrainian frontline, he told her on Telegram.
In an earlier post, Solovyov called the attendees “beasts, scum” and said: “You have no idea how much the people hate you.”
The rapper, Vasio, was convicted under the “LGBTQ propaganda” law banning positive information on lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender people, which authorities toughened last year.
The 25-year-old said in a recorded video the he did “not support LGBT and did not want to make any propaganda about this”.
“I apologise for offending the feelings of other people and being a participant in such a terrible video at such a difficult time for our country [due to the war].”
Russia’s flamboyant pop king Filipp Kirkorov also asked for forgiveness after footage circulated of him wearing a sparkling lace outfit with futuristic sunglasses.
“In today’s difficult and heroic times, an artist of my calibre … cannot and should not be so irresponsible when participating in various events,” he said in an apology video.
Ksenia Sobchak, daughter of Putin’s mentor and his rumoured Goddaughter, appeared in several photos in a beige dress with barbed wire patterns.
She said she understood “showing photos of the party to the whole world was inappropriate” at the moment in a post on social media.
And singer Dima Bilan said he “understood the resentment of our people, especially guys who are defending us on the frontline.”
The Kremlin refused to comment, with Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov asking reporters to forgive him for not publicly commenting on the scandal, adding: “Let you and I be the only ones in the country who aren’t discussing this topic.”
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, however, addressed the controversy on Sputnik radio, saying “Life teaches us painful lessons.”
“These people need to realise the depth of the problem and become better. For their own sake,” she said.
- With AFP
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