Ukraine said on Friday December 30 that it had repelled a nighttime explosive drone attack, launched by Russia less than 24 hours after massive new bombings against energy infrastructure, depriving millions of Ukrainians of electricity.
In Ukraine, the cold war is raging
Since October and a series of military setbacks on the front, Russia has adopted the tactic of striking with its missiles and drones Ukrainian power plants and transformersplunging the population into the cold and darkness in the middle of winter.
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Thursday’s attack, using dozens of missiles, was the tenth of its kind and was followed by a nighttime salvo of Shahed explosive drones, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, which assured this Friday morning to have shot down the 16 Iranian-made aircraft that had been launched.
Four dead, eight injured
kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said seven of them were targeting the capital. Two were shot ” approaching “ of the city and five others above it. There were no casualties but falling debris damaged the windows of two buildings in a southwestern district of kyiv, he added.
According to the Ukrainian presidency, other drones were shot down in the Cherkassy and Dnipro regions in the center of the country.
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In a post on social media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that the war was ” lasts “ but said to himself “convinced (…) that Russian aggression would fail”.
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According to an updated report, 58 of the 70 cruise missiles fired by Russia were shot down on Thursday. And a total of four civilians were killed and eight others injured, according to the latest report from the Ukrainian presidency on Friday.
Energy restrictions
power cuts they remained numerous this Friday, while the current has already been heavily rationed across the country for weeks. The millions of Ukrainians who do not have generators are therefore preparing to celebrate the New Year without electricity, sometimes without water or heating and under curfew.
According to the electricity company Ukrenergo, the “consequences of the damage on the functioning of the network are less than the enemy had expected (…) but the situation in the south and east of the country remains difficult”. In addition, “consumption restrictions have been introduced in all regions” Ukrainians, she added in a statement.
To cope, generators have multiplied in cities across the country. From kyiv to Lviv, its devices purr on the sidewalks to supply businesses and restaurants in particular and allow them to operate.
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While the Russian invasion of Ukraine, launched on February 24, is entering its tenth monththe fighting continues to rage, with a particularly bloody battle for Bakhmout, a city in the east that Russia has been trying to conquer for months, and Kreminna, which Ukrainian forces are trying to retake.
Russia, which was planning a lightning campaign, had to give up taking kyiv in the spring, withdrawing from the north of the country, before to abandon the northeast in September, and part of the south in November, faced with an over-motivated Ukrainian army, armed with Western weapons systems.
Xi Jinping and Putin in videoconference
The prospects for peace talks are almost non-existent. Ukraine demands the total withdrawal of the Russian army, when Moscow wants at least kyiv to cede to it the four regions of which the Kremlin claims annexation since the end of September, as well as the Crimea annexed in 2014.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in early December justified the tactic of massive strikes affecting millions of civilians, calling it a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure. He also presents his invasion, at the cost of heavy losses, as ” a necessity “ensuring that the West was using Ukraine as a bridgehead to threaten Russia.
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Russian-Western relations are therefore at their lowest, with Europeans and Americans stepping up sanctions against Moscow and increasing their military support for Ukraine. This Friday, during a videoconference interview with Chinese President Xi Jinping, an ally of Russia, Vladimir Putin estimated that the two countries were successfully resisting the West.
“In the context of unprecedented pressure and provocations from the West, we defend our positions”he welcomed, advocating in addition to “strengthening cooperation between the armed forces of Russia and China”.