On Friday, the governor of the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv confirmed that a Russian airstrike during the late hours resulted in the death of two individuals. Both Moscow and Kyiv reported a series of aerial attacks overnight. Kharkiv city experienced artillery, rocket, and drone strikes in the hours leading up to New Year’s Eve, causing panic among the evacuees. Additionally, Russian forces targeted the town of Kupyansk, situated near the frontlines, unleashing at least six rockets and a cluster bomb attack that left a nine-story apartment building in ruins, according to officials.
Several other buildings in the city were hit, resulting in a series of blazes that trapped dozens of civilians. The city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, shared a video of a smoldering residential high-rise building.
The White House condemned the attack as “horrific” and said it showed the depths to which Russia has sunk in its war of aggression against Ukraine. The British prime minister called it an “outrageous assault” that showed the Kremlin’s disregard for human life. Amid the attacks, a Ukrainian military spokesman said the country’s air force had intercepted dozens of Iranian-style drones launched by Russia, with the air force commander describing it as the most significant aerial attack since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
It was Russia’s biggest assault since a summer Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to make significant progress along the roughly 1,000-kilometer front line. It comes just before a widely expected Russian presidential election in March that Putin is widely expected to win and which could give him the legitimacy he needs to maintain his brutal dictatorship and keep the war of aggression going against Ukraine.
Kharkiv and the surrounding region are regularly subjected to rocket, missile, and drone attacks by Russia, and the city itself is frequently blasted with artillery and even bombs. The spokesman on the Ukrainian president’s staff, Serhiy Popko, said Ukraine’s air force had shot down 37 drones of the Shahid type launched by Russia during the night.
A boy of about ten was killed in a rocket attack on a school in the town of Kupyansk, according to regional governor Oleh Synegubov. His father, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters he had pulled the boy from the rubble after the explosion but was too shocked by the killing to speak.
The town, whose residents have been barraged by Russian-backed militants for nearly three weeks, is held by about 10 Ukrainian brigades, anchored in the north by the 3rd Tank Brigade and the south by the 4th Tank Brigade. Those forces have around 20,000 troops, hundreds of tanks, fighting vehicles, and howitzers. They have been unable to retake the town, which the rebels took from Ukrainian control early in the war but lost after an ebullient Ukrainian counteroffensive shocked the pro-Russian defenders. They are now restraining the Russians from advancing into the western and southern parts of the region, but they are still pounding the defenders in the east.
