As the world ushered in the new year, Russia and Ukraine have settled into the spiral of mutual drone and missile bombing that began a week ago. Yesterday, Tuesday, January 2, a Russian attack against the capital Kyiv and Kharkiv (north-east) caused at least five deaths and 127 injuries, according to the balance sheet of the Ukrainian authorities. These first two days of 2024, Russians and Ukrainians have accused each other of attacking residential areas and civilian population in several cities of the enemy country.
The Russian attacks followed the Ukrainian bombing of the Russian border town of Belgorod on Saturday, December 30, which left 25 dead, and which was also attacked on January 2. The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, warned that the aggression would not go unpunished. “It was a direct attack against the civilian population. It was definitely a terrorist attack. It cannot be qualified in any other way,” said the head of the Kremlin on the first day of the new year in a meeting he held with Russian soldiers who had fought in Ukraine.
Moscow accuses Kyiv of using cluster bombs against the civilian population and rejects the Ukrainian version that the attack was aimed at Russian military installations but an air defense error diverted the projectiles into a residential area.
The accusation, but inverted, is the same that the two contenders make when it is Moscow that is bombing. The Russian Ministry of Defense always maintains that it only attacks military targets and that civilian casualties occur when the remains of projectiles destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses fall.
When one of the soldiers asked Putin what the Russian response would be after Belgorod, and if Russia should attack in retaliation, Putin said: “We are attacking with high-precision weapons the places where decisions are made, concentrations of military, mercenaries and other similar centers, military objectives, in the first place. And they are sensitive attacks. This is how we will continue,” said Putin.
In yesterday’s large-scale Russian attack, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Valery Zalujni, counted “99 missiles of various types”, of which air defenses “were able to destroy 72”, he said on Telegram. Among the Russian missiles were 10 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, three Kalibr cruise missiles and 59 Kh-101, Kh-555 and Kh-55 cruise missiles, Zalujni added.
Ukrainian officials took stock of five dead civilians, in addition to dozens of wounded. Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov accused Russia in a message on the X network of “deliberately” attacking “residential” areas. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, reported that there were two deaths in the Ukrainian capital after a high-rise building caught fire in a Russian rocket attack. According to the Ukrainian media Suspilne and the television channel TSN, in some areas of the capital there were cuts in electricity and the supply of running water. A couple died on the outskirts of Kyiv.
In Kharkiv, a 91-year-old woman was killed in a missile attack that left a crater several meters deep near damaged residential buildings, said Oleh Sinehúbov, the regional governor.
Ukrainian authorities also reported attacks in the Vinnytsia and Mykolaiv regions.
“Russia will answer for every life it has taken,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukraine also took the opportunity to ask its Western allies for more and faster military assistance. “There is no reason to believe that the enemy will stop here. That’s why we need more systems and ammunition”, said General Zalujni.
Later Vyacheslav Gladkov, regional governor of the Russian border town of Belgorod, 80 kilometers from the Ukrainian Kharkiv, said that an attack against this town, the second in three days, yesterday left one dead and seven wounded.
The Russian bombings are the response to the Ukrainian attack on Saturday the 30th against Belgorod, which left 25 dead and more than a hundred wounded, according to the Russian authorities. This, in turn, was the Ukrainian retaliation for the large-scale attack that Russia carried out on the 29th against numerous Ukrainian cities, in which 39 people were killed and more than 130 were injured, according to the accounts of Kyiv .
And the previous one was after Ukraine attacked the port of Feodosia, on the Crimean peninsula, on December 26, when it attacked the landing ship Novocherkassk, one of the jewels in the crown of the Russian Black Sea fleet.
