ShareKYIV: A fresh barrage of Russian missiles battered Ukraine on Thursday, killing at least one person, wounding several others and cutting electricity in the west. In a first, Belarus said a Ukrainian missile fell on its territory, raising fears the conflict could expand. On Thursday morning, blasts were reported across the vast country - including in Kyiv, where a teenager was injured, the second city Kharkiv in the east and the western city of Lviv on the border with Poland.
Most of Lviv, where Russian strikes are rare, was left without electricity, mayor Andriy Sadoviy said. The missiles struck even the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk at the foothills of the picturesque Carpathian Mountains located nearly a thousand kilometers from Russia. "The enemy keeps resorting to its missile terror against the peaceful citizens of Ukraine," said Ukraine's commander-in-chief General Valeriy Zaluzhny. Zaluzhny said Russia had launched 69 cruise missiles, 54 of which had been shot down.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pointed out that the latest attacks came just as Ukrainians were preparing to celebrate the New Year. "Senseless barbarism," he tweeted. In southern Kyiv, Georgiy Yatsenko, 65, said he was hiding in the basement with three of his grandchildren when an explosion occurred at around 9:00 am (0700 GMT). "There is no glass left in the windows. Everything was blown away," he said, adding that he would need to cover them with plastic to keep out the cold. "The war is going on. We have to do whatever we can to survive. The main thing is that people are alive."
Emergency workers used excavators to clear rubble from the explosion, which heavily damaged half a dozen houses in Yatsenko's neighborhood. In the historic city of Lviv, power cuts paralyzed public transport. "We are stuck, getting cold in this tram, but what can we do?" said Iryna Ivaneyko, a tram driver. "Some people are scared, some are not. This is war. We have to survive this, endure and win."
The attacks came 10 months into Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. In recent months Russian strikes have targeted the energy grid, leaving millions in the cold in the middle of winter. On Thursday, the Belarusian defense ministry said its forces had downed a Ukrainian missile near the western city of Brest on the border with Poland. The authorities in Minsk summoned Ukraine's ambassador to protest the incident, said a foreign ministry spokesman.
The US embassy in Kyiv said Moscow was ramping up its campaign of attacks, "cruelly wielding cold and dark" against Ukraine. "Russia does not want peace with Ukraine," said British ambassador Melinda Simmons. "Russia wants the subjugation of Ukraine." EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Russian troops had "deliberately" targeted and killed civilians. "There will be no impunity for Russian war crimes," he added.
As Ukraine came under a fresh assault, Russian President Vladimir Putin took part by video link in a ceremony that saw the commissioning of new warships and a nuclear-powered submarine. Western intelligence has said Russia is struggling to meet ordnance needs for the invasion, something Moscow has denied. "We will never run out of Kalibrs," the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday, referring to the cruise missiles used against Ukraine.
Moscow has accused pro-Kyiv forces of targeting Russian military sites and civilian infrastructure. On Thursday Russian forces shot down a drone near Engels, a key air base hundreds of kilometers from Ukraine's border. The Engels base has already been targeted twice this month in deadly attacks that Moscow blames on Ukraine.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said the situation was "tough" in the west of the country and in the regions of Odessa and Kyiv, warning there would be emergency power shutdowns. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that at least three people had been wounded in Thursday's strikes, including a 14-year-old girl. Close to half of Kyiv's population had been left without power, he added.
Two houses were hit by fragments of downed missiles in the east of the capital while an industrial enterprise and a playground were damaged in the city's southwest, officials said. Air defense systems downed all 16 missiles that targeted Kyiv. In Ukraine's second city Kharkiv, in the east, at least one person was killed and another was injured, said regional governor Oleg Synegubov. Another person was wounded in the eastern region of Donetsk.
In the south, Odessa governor Maxim Marchenko said air defense systems shot down 21 missiles over the region. In the southern city of Kherson the strikes damaged a medical facility and injured two people, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president's office. Moscow has said the strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are a response to an explosion on the Kerch bridge connecting the Russian mainland to Crimea, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014. - AFP
