AAccording to officials there, Ukraine was also hit by massive air attacks by Russia on New Year’s Eve. Several regions of the country were therefore shot at on Saturday. At least one person was reportedly killed and more than a dozen others injured.
Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Valery Zalushny said Russian forces fired 20 rockets at Ukraine a few hours before the turn of the year. The Ukrainian air defenses were able to intercept and destroy twelve of them. Six Russian missiles alone were intercepted over the capital Kyiv.
According to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, an elderly man was killed in the attacks in Kyiv. Seven others were injured in two explosions in the Solomianskyj district, Klitschko said on the online service Telegram. One of the injured is in an “extremely serious” condition.
In total, Kyiv was rocked by at least ten explosions, according to correspondents from the AFP news agency. The authorities had previously raised the air alarm and asked people to get to safety in shelters.
According to the authorities, several other regions were also attacked. Attacks were reported from the southern Mykolayiv region and from the Khmelnytskyi region in the west, among others.
According to Governor Vitaly Kim, at least two people were injured in the Mykolaiv region, one of them seriously. In the Khmelnytskyi region, governor Serhiy Gamalij called on people to stay in shelters because of the attacks on New Year’s Eve.
All developments in the live ticker:
10:27 p.m. – New Russian drone attack
Shortly before the turn of the year, the arrival of so-called kamikaze drones from Russia was reported in Ukraine. Air alerts were sounded for the cities of Odessa and Mykolaiv in the south, and Dnipro in the center of the country, Unian agency reported. Mykolayiv military administrator Vitali Kim reported two formations of drones sighted in his area. The air defense opened fire on the Iranian-made Shahed drones.
8:55 p.m. – Macron pledges help to Ukraine until victory
France has pledged support for Ukraine until victory. In the new year, the country stands unreservedly with Ukraine, said President Emmanuel Macron in his New Year’s speech.
6:34 p.m. – Zelenskyy to Russia: Ukraine will never be forgiven
After the recent Russian rocket attack on Ukrainian cities with new destruction, Head of State Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the Russian people directly in his video message. “A terrorist state will not be forgiven,” he said in his somewhat premature daily video appearance on Saturday afternoon. “And those who order such attacks and those who carry them out will not be forgiven, to say the least.”
In Russian, Zelenskyy declared that Russia was not at war with NATO “as your propagandists lie”. The war is also not for something historical. “It (the war) is for a person who stays in power until the end of his life,” he said, referring directly to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. “And what’s left of all of you, citizens of Russia, is none of his business.”
Putin wants to show that he has the military behind him and is ahead. “But he’s just hiding,” Zelenskyj said. “He hides behind the military, behind rockets, behind the walls of his residences and palaces, he hides behind you and burns your country and your future.” No one will ever forgive Russia for terror, Zelensky said. “No one in the world will forgive you for that. Ukraine will never forgive you.”
5:16 p.m. – Russia and Ukraine exchange prisoners again
Shortly before the New Year, Russia and Ukraine again exchanged prisoners of war. 140 Ukrainian soldiers have returned home, said the head of the presidential office in Kyiv, Andriy Ermak, on Telegram on Saturday. On the other hand, the Russian army received 82 of their relatives, the state agency Tass reported. The place and time of the exchange were not mentioned.
The former Russian prisoners of war, mostly wounded soldiers, were immediately flown to Moscow for further treatment, Tass reported.
Eight women were among the released Ukrainians, Yermak said. The wounded were also handed over, as well as fighters from the port city of Mariupol. “Welcome home, dear ones,” he concluded his Telegram message.
4:13 p.m. – Ukrainian artillery attacks Luhansk – explosions over Crimea
Ukrainian artillery attacked Russian positions in eastern Ukraine on Saturday. The village of Pervomaiskoye in the Luhansk region of Donbass has been the target of at least two rounds of fire from the American Himars multiple rocket launcher, the Russian agency TASS reported, citing local authorities. No information was given about possible casualties or damage.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian media reported explosions near Dzhankoy Airport in Russian-occupied Crimea. Messages from social networks were quoted, according to which the detonations could be attributed to the use of anti-aircraft missiles.
12:40 p.m. – Alarm of air strikes throughout Ukraine
Air raid alarm is sounded in entire territory of Ukraine. Local officials warn of Russian missile attacks and urge citizens to seek shelter.
11:50 am – London: Russia is likely to use the turn of the year for missile attacks
According to estimates by British military experts, Russian missile attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure could be intensified over the turn of the year. This emerges from the daily intelligence update from the Ministry of Defense in London on the Ukraine war on Saturday. According to this, the beatings have so far been carried out at intervals of seven to ten days. “Russia will almost certainly continue this pattern to overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses,” the statement said. But there is “a realistic possibility” that Russia will strike again in the coming days “to break the morale of the Ukrainian population over the New Year period,” it said.
10:00 am – Bas calls for further relief for low-income households
Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) has called for further support for people on low incomes as a result of the high energy prices caused by the Ukraine war. The energy will remain very expensive for the time being, said the Duisburg resident of the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (Saturday). “So I see an additional need for support for very low-income households in the country.”
She appealed to the federal government to focus the help in a targeted and sufficient manner on the people who really needed it when it came to additional relief packages. With the previous relief and energy price brakes, the government has so far managed to take away the greatest uncertainty from the people, said the President of the Bundestag. “The hot autumn conjured up by many did not happen. This is an important achievement.”
9:20 a.m. – “Regime change” in Moscow must be a German and EU goal, Eastern Europe expert Meister demands
According to Eastern Europe expert Stefan Meister, Germany must strive for political change in Russia. “Deep regime change in Moscow must be a goal of German and European foreign and security policy,” said the political scientist from the German Society for Foreign Relations „Spiegel“. He accused the federal government of still not having a long-term strategy for dealing with Russia.
“What should the toolbox look like, which funds have to flow into which areas? I hear too little from the Foreign Office and especially from the Chancellery,” continued Meister. There is no coherent strategy for the entire post-Soviet space.
Since the attack on Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has broken with the long-standing course of “change through trade”, but a “system of systematic irresponsibility” has taken its place, criticized the political scientist. Scholz “are hidden behind institutions like the EU and NATO”. Germany is in danger of falling back into old patterns of behavior.
Meister also sees the German civil service as responsible for this, as it shows “enormous persistence”. In all ministries there is “a large number of officials and employees who advocate good relations with Russia”.
9:00 a.m. – Käßmann: Intensify contacts with Russia
The Protestant theologian Margot Käßmann has called for “massive peace initiatives” for the year 2023 in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The absolute destruction that Putin is driving in Ukraine must be stopped, the former chairwoman of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” (Saturday). She is convinced that the call for more and more weapons will not bring a solution. There is no strategy behind it, because it is not clear where this should lead.
On the other hand, there must be serious cooperation with Russian civil society, said the theologian. The former bishop of Hanover said that she was opposed to the fact that city, scientific and cultural partnerships with Russia were now being ended. “We don’t need to cut ties with Russia, we need to intensify them to encourage the people of Russia to oppose the war in Ukraine.”
6:00 a.m. – 200,000 Ukrainian students – teachers “at the limit”
High school representatives are demanding additional support because of the large number of Ukrainian students admitted. Resources urgently need to be made available more quickly, said the chairman of the federal directors’ conference for high schools, Arnd Niedermöller, of the German Press Agency. “We cannot wait a year and a half before the new student numbers appear in the statistics and we can hire more teachers.” The teachers approached their tasks with full dedication and were at the limit, said Susanne Lin-Klitzing, Chairwoman of the German Philologists’ Association. representing high school teachers.
Both associations jointly surveyed the school administrations of more than 350 high schools in eight federal states. The survey makes it clear that many schools are struggling with scarce resources given the situation.
True, half of the respondents who took in Ukrainian students said that additional staff were hired for teaching. But that wasn’t the case for the other half. At almost every fifth school with Ukrainian students (19 percent), part-time teachers have increased their hours. Retired teachers came back for support at almost eight percent of these schools. Overall, however, the clear majority (68 percent in the country, 63 percent in the city) is of the opinion that not enough staff can be recruited for the tasks at the moment.