Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko demands Leopard 2 tanks from Germany and speaks of a dark future. Putin’s decree for 137,000 additional soldiers has come into effect and his forces are again launching massive missile attacks in Ukraine. All news about the Ukraine war can be found in the Newsticker.
Monday, January 2, 8:28 a.m.: Russia has attacked Ukraine with combat drones for the fifth night in a row. In the capital Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced on Monday morning that energy infrastructure had been damaged in the attacks. There are power outages in the city, which also affected the heat supply, he said. The water supply is running normally. The Ukrainian air defense announced that a total of 43 drones and one missile had been shot down. According to reports, 22 drones were shot down in Kyiv alone.
Mayor Klitschko also said that after an explosion in a neighborhood, a 19-year-old boy had to be hospitalized with injuries. A house there had been hit during a Russian attack.
On the night of Monday there was another air alert in many parts of Ukraine. For days, Russia has been increasingly attacking at night with Iranian-type Shahed-136 kamikaze combat drones. Russian military bloggers reported that in addition to Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions were affected. The massive attacks with combat drones began on Thursday.
Russia has also repeatedly reported drone attacks from the Ukrainian side. According to Governor Alexander Bogomas, the energy infrastructure was hit on Monday in the Bryansk region near the Russian border. As a result, the power went out in one place. There were no injuries, Bogomas said.
10:13 p.m .: The Russian military launched new attacks with so-called kamikaze drones against targets in Ukraine on Sunday evening. Two groups of Iranian-made Shahed drones were sighted near Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, the state news agency Ukrinform reported.
“Air alert, two groups of mopeds,” regional military administrator Vitali Kim wrote on Telegram. Because of their engine noise, the drones are now called “mopeds” by the Ukrainian population. Air alert was sounded throughout the south of the country.
8:36 p.m .: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj has sharply condemned the recent Russian drone attacks on his country’s cities on New Year’s Eve. “The Russian terrorists were already pathetic and started the new year the same way,” Zelenskyy said in his daily video address on Sunday. These attacks could not harm the Ukrainians. “Our sense of togetherness, our authenticity, life itself – all of this is so much in contrast to the fear that prevails in Russia.”
The Russian military is palpably afraid, Zelenskyj claimed. “And they are right to be afraid, because they will lose.” Even with drones and rockets, the Russian military would not get very far. “Because we stick together.” The Russian side, on the other hand, is only held together by fear, he argued.
The Russian military launched a wave of so-called kamikaze drones towards Ukrainian cities on New Year’s Eve.
6:46 p.m .: With the massive airstrikes against a number of Ukrainian cities on New Year’s Eve, Russia has switched to a new strategy, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak. “Russia has no more military targets,” Podoliak tweeted on Sunday. “It (Russia) is trying to kill as many civilians as possible and destroy as many civilian objects as possible. A war of killing.”
The Russian military launched a wave of so-called kamikaze drones against several Ukrainian cities on New Year’s Eve. According to the Ukrainian military leadership, the Iranian-made Shahed-type drones were all shot down before they reached their targets. Among other things, the drones were aimed at Kyiv and the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
5:28 p.m .: In the course of heavy fighting for the eastern Ukrainian frontline town of Bakhmut, Russian troops have suffered heavy losses, according to Ukrainian accounts. As the spokesman for the Ukrainian Army Group East, Serhiy Tscherevatyj, announced on Sunday, around 170 Russian soldiers had been killed the day before alone. Another 200 Russians were wounded trying to attack the city. Cherevatyj spoke of an “assembly line of death” for the attackers. The information on the number of victims could not initially be independently verified.
Bakhmut is considered the so-called cornerstone of the Ukrainian front lines in the east of the country. For the Russian armed forces, the city is a prestige object that they want to conquer at any cost. The Russian attacks are led by members of the notorious Wagner mercenary group. The Russian side also regularly reports high numbers of casualties among the ranks of the Ukrainian opponents.
4:41 p.m .: Despite a clear ban on fireworks in Ukraine, a 47-year-old ignited rockets in the capital Kyiv on New Year’s Eve and is now facing a long prison sentence. “Now he faces five years in prison,” wrote Mayor Vitali Klitschko on Telegram on Sunday.
Local residents had informed the police about the banned fireworks. The officers arrested the man and confiscated a whole warehouse of pyrotechnic products in his apartment. The 47-year-old is now being charged with hooliganism, the police said.
In Ukraine, there is a general ban on fireworks during the state of war. Shortly after the illegal fireworks, an air alert was sounded in Kyiv because Russia had launched a wave of so-called kamikaze drones on the Ukrainian capital.
4:11 p.m .: With an alleged precision attack, Moscow claims to have hit Ukrainian facilities for the production of combat drones on Saturday. As “ntv” reports, the Russian Defense Ministry reported the strike against Ukraine to the Russian news agency “Tass” on Sunday. According to spokesman Igor Konashenkov, plans by Kiev to “carry out terrorist attacks against Russia in the near future” have been foiled.
3:57 p.m .: According to Ukrainian information, three people were killed and at least 50 others injured in the Russian air raids on New Year’s night. This is reported by the Ukrainian news agency Nexta, citing the Office of the President of Ukraine.
11:01 a.m .: More than ten months after the start of Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine, the number of military personnel in Russia will increase by 137,000 at the beginning of the new year. A corresponding decree on the increase to around 1.15 million contract soldiers and conscripts ordered by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in August officially came into force on Sunday. According to this, the army strength should total more than two million people. The rest of the military personnel are civilian personnel, including some administrative employees.
In September, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said new units were being created. The minister accused the western states, led by the United States, of taking a course against Russia and its allies; he justified the increase in the number of soldiers. “The NATO bloc is moving closer to the Russian borders,” Shoigu said.
Since the start of the war against Ukraine ordered by Putin on February 24, the Russian army has repeatedly had to contend with major personnel problems. The increase in the number of military personnel is now intended to remedy the situation. In addition, Putin had called up around 300,000 reservists for a partial mobilization – accompanied by protests in the population and a mass flight of men abroad. The people in Russia fear that Putin could decide on further mobilizations in order to still win his war in Ukraine, which has been overshadowed by many defeats.
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