Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 678

Summary for Tuesday, 2nd January 2024 - DAY 678

• Russia has launched a missile attack on Kyiv hours after a drone attack, the capital’s military administration has said. The assault comes after Russian president Vladimir Putin vowed to intensify strikes on Ukraine after an unprecedented and deadly attack by Ukraine on the Russian city of Belgorod over the weekend.
  
  
• Russia launched a total of 35 attack drones at Ukraine in the early hours of Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with air defence systems destroying all the drones.
  Downed drone debris sparked a fire at a residential building in Desnianskyi, one of Kyiv’s most populous districts, Ukrainian officials said.
  
  
• The death toll following Ukrainian strikes on Belgorod has risen to 25, according to the region’s governor. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Monday a four-year-old girl died from injuries sustained in the attack. The attack on Saturday came after Moscow launched a large-scale attack on Ukrainian cities on Friday.
  
  
• Ukraine claims Russia has launched a ‘record number’ of attack drones on New Year’s Day. Ukraine’s air force said 87 out of 90 drones had successfully been shot down.
  
  
• Russian drones attacked a university and a museum linked to two of the most prominent 20th century defenders of Ukrainian national identity on Monday, leaving locals vowing to repair the damage. The first smashed windows and much of the roof at the National Agrarian University, outside the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, where Stepan Bandera – a hero in Ukraine but a villain according to the Kremlin – studied. The second ravaged a nearby museum devoted to Roman Shukhevych.
  
  
• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Economist that the notion that Russia was winning the nearly two-year-old war was only a “feeling” and that Moscow was still suffering heavy battlefield losses. Zelenskiy, in an interview published on Monday, provided no substantiation of his allegation on Russian losses. He said Ukraine’s priorities in 2024 included hitting Russia’s strengths in Crimea to reduce the number of attacks on his country as well as protecting key cities on the eastern front.
  
  
• In the interview, Zelenskiy rejected any suggestion that Moscow was interested in peace talks, pointing to Moscow’s repeated waves of aerial strikes. “I see only the steps of a terrorist country,” he said.
  

Loud explosions in Kyiv

Russia launched a total of 35 attack drones at Ukraine in the early hours of Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with air defence systems destroying all of them.

The attacks on Kyiv early Tuesday came after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said on Monday that Ukraine’s strikes on Belgorod “will not go unpunished.”

Here are some recent images of the conflict:

Here is an update on the situation on the ground in Kyiv

Russia accidentally bombs own village near Ukraine

On 2 January 2024, at around 9am Moscow time (GMT), during a flight of the aerospace forces, an abnormal discharge of aircraft ammunition occurred over the village of Petropavlovka in the Voronezh region.
There are no casualties.

Russian missile attacks kill five people in Ukraine, officials say

Summary of the day so far...

• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, urged faster supplies of air defence systems, combat drones and long-range missiles, the ministry said. It said Kuleba called on Ukraine’s western partners to respond to a new Russian strike on Ukraine by “accelerating the supply of additional air defence systems, combat drones of all types, long-range missiles with a range of 300+ km”.
  
  
• Russia said it had accidentally bombed a village in its southern Voronezh region near Ukraine. In a statement quoted by Russian news agencies, the Russian army said: “On 2 January 2024, at around 9am Moscow time (GMT), during a flight of the aerospace forces, an abnormal discharge of aircraft ammunition occurred over the village of Petropavlovka in the Voronezh region. There are no casualties.”
  
  
• Officials said Russian missile attacks on Ukraine on Tuesday have so far killed four people, according to Agence France-Presse. As well as the reported death in Kharkiv and the death of the woman reported by the mayor, Vitali Klitschko, in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, the country’s interior minister, Igor Klymenko, said two people were killed in the Kyiv region. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said “Russia will answer for every life taken away” after the attacks.
  

Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, said at least 115 people had been injured in Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the north-eastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday.

Here is an update on the situation in Belgorod, near Russia’s border with Ukraine:

Turkey to block UK minehunter ships intended for Ukraine: report

Russians smoked out of trenches and fed with lead on Zaporizhzhia front

The State Border Service of Ukraine's aerial reconnaissance identified the positions of Russian soldiers on the Zaporizhzhia front and guided the fire of artillery forces.

Russia strikes residences and a supermarket in Ukraine's capital and other cities

KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched another large missile and drone attack on Ukraine's two largest cities on Tuesday, killing five people and injuring 127, Ukrainian emergency services said.

Iryna Karetnykova and her partner Viktor Tyschenko were in the building when it was struck by a Russian missile in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR

Strikes on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv hit residential buildings, a supermarket and gas infrastructure, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Firefighters and emergency service workers work the scene at a residential building in Kyiv that was damaged in a Russian missile strike on Tuesday. Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR

Kyiv resident Viktor Tyschenko, 75, says he heard "five or six explosions — and then boom! We thought our lives were over."
The apartment complex where he and his partner live had been hit and caught fire. Their sixth-floor flat was quickly destroyed.
"There was so much smoke," his partner, 76-year-old Iryna Karetnykova, says. "I was yelling, 'Save us! Save us!' — hoping someone would hear." Rescue workers came with a crane and helped the couple escape.
Her face and hands still covered in soot, she says, "We don't have anything anymore. We are homeless now."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country's military shot down 70 of almost 100 Russian missiles, most of them over the capital of Kyiv. Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR

Two of the fatalities and 45 injured were in the apartment building, according to Kyiv's mayor.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country's defenses shot down 70 of nearly 100 missiles across Ukraine, most of them over Kyiv. The northeastern city of Kharkiv was also "hit hard," he said on his Telegram social media channel.
"The enemy launched dozens of attack drones, cruise and aerial ballistic missiles at Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kropyvnytskyi and other settlements," the Foreign Ministry statement said. The Ukrainian air force said on Telegram that these included Russia's Kinzhal hypersonic missile.

Firefighters help a woman climb out of the building after she went inside to search for her cat, following the missile strike. Photo: Claire Harbage/NPR

This follows a holiday weekend of Russia's aerial assaults on Ukraine, with a major attack on cities across Ukraine including Lviv, Odesa and Khmelnytskyi.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to retaliate against Ukraine after a western Russian city was struck by a deadly drone attack, The Associated Press reported, citing Putin as saying, "We will intensify strikes."

Russian troops beaten up upon returning from Ukraine

Russian troops were beaten up upon their return home from the front lines in Ukraine, Russia's Investigative Committee said.
On Monday, the committee said it was opening a criminal case against three people for "acts of hooliganism" after they attacked Russian servicemen on New Year's Eve in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. Local media reported that the people were Russian migrants.
The incident came as reports emerged that Russian authorities detained about 3,000 migrants in St. Petersburg on New Year's Eve as part of a series of mass detentions across the country.
Beginning in August, reports emerged that migrant workers with Russian citizenship were being rounded up to fight in the war against Ukraine, which began with Russia's invasion on February 24, 2022.

Russian soldiers attend the Russian Communist Party's congress ahead of presidential election in the village of Rozhdestveno, Moscow region, on December 23, 2023. Russian troops were beaten up upon their return home from the front lines in Ukraine, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. OLESYA KURPYAYEVA/AFP/Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law decrees that appear to entice migrants with Russian passports to serve in his military, and in the war in Ukraine. That includes a March 2023 decree that simplifies the process of obtaining Russian citizenship for foreign nationals who serve in his military while the war is going on in the neighboring country.
"A crowd of drunken migrants attacked two young men demobilized from the front line, one soldier was hit with a baton," the investigative committee said in a post on Telegram.
"It is also noted that the migrants insulted the wives of veterans of the special military operation," it added, using the term Putin employs to describe his invasion of Ukraine.
On Monday evening, the Chelyabinsk region police reported that three people who allegedly were "committing illegal acts against members of [Russia's war in Ukraine]" were detained.
The British Defense Ministry said in an intelligence update on the war in Ukraine in September that Russia has been "exploiting foreign nationals" to boost its manpower in Ukraine in the face of mounting casualties.
Such a method is likely being used by Moscow as Putin wishes to avoid further unpopular domestic mobilization measures in the run-up to the 2024 presidential elections, the ministry said.
Konstantin Sonin, a Russian-born political economist from the University of Chicago, previously told Newsweek that Putin is likely deterred from announcing an open mass mobilization because the propaganda narrative that he and his entourage are pushing is that Russia is not waging a war but is conducting a limited-scale military operation.
"This is what he is fed in the army and police reports, and this is the language that he speaks to his subordinates and the general public," Sonin said, explaining that even if Putin does attempt to draft more men for the war, it will be accompanied by rhetoric claiming nothing new is happening. "Announcing a mobilization in the open will be a drastic departure from this worldview, almost like bursting from an informational bubble."

Closing Summary

• Russian missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and the north-eastern city of Kharkiv killed at least five people on Tuesday and injured dozens of others, Ukrainian officials said. Officials said the attacks caused widespread damage and hit power supplies. Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said gas pipelines had been damaged in Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district, while electricity and water had been cut off in several districts of the capital. Heating and water supplies were damaged in Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
  
  
• One man was killed and seven people were injured on Tuesday in a Ukrainian attack on the city and region of Belgorod, near Russia’s border with Ukraine, the defence ministry and regional officials said.
  
  
• Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, urged faster supplies of air defence systems, combat drones and long-range missiles, the ministry said. It said Kuleba called on Ukraine’s western partners to respond to a new Russian strike on Ukraine by “accelerating the supply of additional air defence systems, combat drones of all types, long-range missiles with a range of 300+ km”.
  
  
• Russia said it had accidentally bombed a village in its southern Voronezh region near Ukraine. In a statement quoted by Russian news agencies, the Russian army said: “On 2 January 2024, at around 9am Moscow time (GMT), during a flight of the aerospace forces, an abnormal discharge of aircraft ammunition occurred over the village of Petropavlovka in the Voronezh region. There are no casualties.”