Ukraine said it had shot down all Russian drones in a massive wave of attacks, CNN reports.
It comes after Moscow launched an unprecedented third straight night of air strikes against civilian targets, intensifying its air war for the New Year holiday.
Russia has seen in the new year by dropping down nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, hundreds of miles from the front lines. That marks a change in tactics after months in which Moscow usually spaced such strikes around a week apart.
Russian leaders issued a series of defiant messages ahead of the new year. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would “never give in” to the west, and was fighting for its “motherland, truth and justice … so that Russia’s security can be guaranteed”.
After firing dozens of missiles on Dec. 31, Russia launched dozens of Iranian-made Shahed drones on Jan. 1 and Jan. 2. But Kyiv said on Monday it had shot down all 39 drones in the latest wave, including 22 shot down over the capital.
Russia has claimed its strikes against Ukraine on New Year’s Eve were targeting drone production sites. The strikes included the launch of more than 20 cruise missiles that killed at least three people.
A children’s hospital was among the buildings said to have been hit by Russian shelling.
Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Kyiv and the surrounding areas today.
Ukrainian officials claim Russia is deliberately targeting civilians to sow fear.
Russian officials meanwhile are reeling from reports that high numbers of freshly mobilized Russian troops had been killed in a strike on a college converted to a barracks in occupied Ukraine, where soldiers were housed with an ammunition dump.
A New Year’s Day attack on a complex in the Russian-controlled city of Makiivka killed scores of recently mobilized troops sent by Moscow in what could be one of the deadliest known incidents involving Russian troops so far.
Without claiming the strike, Ukraine’s military command said up to 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the incident in Makiivka, a city in the Russia-controlled parts of the Donetsk region.
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