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Drone attack comes as third anniversary of the war approaches
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Russia has launched a major drone attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on New Year’s Day.
More than 100 drones targeted the city in the early hours of Wednesday morning as the rest of the world was celebrating the arrival of 2025.
At least six people including a pregnant woman were among the injured, city officials said.
The attack comes amid concerns over the direction of the war, which is set to reach its third anniversary in February.
In his New Year’s message, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said he had no doubt incoming US president Donald Trump was capable of achieving peace.
The president-elect has boasted that he would be able to end the war “within 24 hours” of returning to office after his victory in the US elections in November.
Mr Zelensky thanked the current US administration for providing a wide array of critical military equipment, including 39 multiple-launch rocket systems, 301 Howitzer artillery weapons and over 300 million units of ammunition, as he recalled conversations with outgoing president Joe Biden and “everyone who supports us in the United States”.
Russian forces in 2024 advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since 2022, the war’s first year, and control about a fifth of the country. But the gains have come at the cost of heavy, though undisclosed, losses in men and equipment.
In 2024, Russia was invaded for the first time since the Second World War as Ukraine grabbed a slice of its western Kursk region in a surprise counter-attack on 6 August.
Russia has yet to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk despite bringing in more than 10,000 troops from its ally North Korea, according to Ukrainian, South Korean and US assessments. Russia has neither confirmed nor denied their presence.
“To sustain even the very slow advance in Ukraine, Russia has been forced to ignore the months-long occupation of part of its own territory by Ukrainian forces,” British security expert Ruth Deyermond said.
“Taking a ‘nothing to see here’ attitude to the loss of its own land is not what great powers do, particularly one so preoccupied with the idea of state sovereignty.”
Deyermond, in a long thread posted on X, suggested Putin’s efforts to portray Russia as a leading world power were also undermined by the toppling of its chief Middle East ally, former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and its increasing dependence on China.
Mr Putin, the longest-serving ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, said on 19 December that under his leadership the country had moved back from “the edge of the abyss” and rebuffed threats to its sovereignty.
With hindsight, he said, he should not have waited until February 2022 before launching his “special military operation” in Ukraine, the term he still uses for the full-scale invasion of Russia’s neighbour.
Vladimir Putin made a three-word pledge to Russia’s soldiers in his pre-recorded New Year address.
In his address to the nation on Tuesday (31 December), the Russian President praised his country’s military in its war against Ukraine, telling soldiers, “We believe in you.”
Putin ensured Russians that everything will be fine as the country enters the third year of fighting in Ukraine.
Read the full story here
Ukraine has halted Russian gas supplies to European customers that pass through the country, almost three years into Moscow’s all-out invasion.
At a summit in Brussels last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that Kyiv would not allow Russia to use the transits to earn “additional billions … on our blood, on the lives of our citizens.” But he briefly held open the possibility of the gas flows continuing if payments to Russia were withheld until the war ends.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, confirmed on Wednesday morning that Kyiv had stopped the transit “in the interest of national security.”
“This is a historic event. Russia is losing markets and will incur financial losses. Europe has already decided to phase out Russian gas, and (this) aligns with what Ukraine has done today,” Halushchenko said in an update on the Telegram messaging app.
Sam Rkaina reports:
Russia’s Gazprom said that it “has no technical and legal possibility” of sending gas through Ukraine, due to Kyiv’s refusal to extend the deal
By the time February 2025 arrives, marking three years since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the situation on the front line could look very different.
Currently, Russian forces are advancing in the east, slowly but surely, and they are shrinking Ukraine’s partial hold of the border region of Kursk.
That the Russians haven’t been more successful is a testament, above all else, to the resilience of Ukraine’s troops on the ground, many of whom have been fighting continuously for years. Dysfunction in the Russian military, with Mr Putin as its de facto commander-in-chief, is another.
But US president Joe Biden has sent the final military package of his tenure to Ukraine, ending the support (for now) of Kyiv’s most heavily-armed ally. US president-elect Donald Trump will soon re-enter the White House on the promise of ending the fighting altogether, even if that potentially means rewarding Mr Putin for his illegal land grab.
Tom Watling reports:
Russian forces are advancing in the east, slowly but surely, and they are shrinking Ukraine’s partial hold of the border region of Kursk
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has thanked the Ukrainian people and soldiers for their steadfastness in a New Year’s address, as the war approaches its fourth year.
He wrote on X: “Today, I address all those who value Ukraine, cherish their state, and lovingly call it ‘Mine’.
“Those who cannot imagine themselves without Ukraine, no matter where they are. All those who have been fighting for it – so steadfastly and so bravely – for more than 1,000 days. This is you – our people. Ukrainians – men and women.
“To all of whom I am grateful to for this year, 2024. Our people who endure all difficulties with dignity. People for whom being citizens of Ukraine is a source of pride.
“For me, it is an honor to be the President of such people – Ukrainians who prove that no cruise missile can defeat a nation that has wings.”
One person was killed in the drone attack on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, city officials have said.
Two floors of a residential building were partially destroyed in the strike, before a woman’s body was pulled from the debris, officials added.
Firefighters tackled a blaze caused by the drone strike on Wednesday morning, which also injured six other people.
Russia launched a drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Wednesday, wounding at least six people and damaging buildings in two districts, city officials said.
Explosions boomed across the morning sky as Ukraine’s air force warned of drones approaching the city and Mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defences were repelling an enemy attack.
Two floors of a residential building were partially destroyed in the strike, Klitschko said. Photos posted by the State Emergency Service showed firefighters dousing a gutted corner of a building and helping elderly victims.
Debris from downed drones also damaged a non-residential building in another neighbourhood, Klitschko added.
“This is yet another reminder to the world that Russian aggression knows no holidays or days off,” Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, wrote on X shortly after the morning attack.
Kyiv’s military said it had shot down 63 out of 111 drones launched by Russia overnight across various regions of Ukraine. Another 46 had been downed by electronic jamming, it added.
Russia has carried out regular air strikes on Ukrainian towns and cities far behind the front line of its nearly three-year-old invasion.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates, officials said.
Volodymyr Zelensky said 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange.
Russia’s defence ministry said that 150 Russian soldiers were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people.
The reason for the discrepancy in numbers wasn’t immediately clear.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that released hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates
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