Russian defence ministry says 63 servicemen killed in Makiivka
Russia’s defence ministry said that 63 Russian servicemen had been killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on their temporary accommodation in the town of Makiivka, in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
More to follow on this as it develops.
Key events
We will now be closing the blog.
Here is a brief summary of the day’s main news stories:
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A New Year’s Day attack on a complex in the Russian-controlled city of Makiivka killed scores of recently mobilised troops sent by Moscow, according to reports on both sides, in what could be one of the deadliest known incidents involving Russian conscripts so far. Ukraine’s military command said up to 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the incident in Makiivka, a city in the Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region.
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The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has praised Ukrainians for showing gratitude to the troops and one another and said Russia’s efforts would prove useless. “Drones, missiles, everything else will not help them,” he said of the Russians. “Because we stand united. They are united only by fear.” Ukraine’s air defence systems worked through the night to bring down incoming drones and warn communities of the approaching danger, Reuters reported.
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Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and surrounding areas early on Monday morning. Air raid alerts were sounded in Kyiv and across eastern Ukraine, beginning just before midnight and still wailing hours later. Debris from a destroyed drone hit Kyiv’s northeastern Desnianskiy district, wounding a 19-year-old man who was later taken to hospital, the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said.
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The Ukrainian ministry of defence claimed it shot down 39 Iranian-made Shahed drones, as well as a cruise missile, last night.
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Ukraine published the latest figures regarding Russian losses since the beginning of the invasion last February. It says an estimated 107,440 Russian soldiers have been killed, while it claims to have destroyed 283 aircraft and more than 3,000 Russian tanks.
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Over the last five days, Russian and Ukrainian forces have probably been fighting for control of the P66 highway north of the Russian-held Luhansk town of Kremina, the UK Ministry of Defence reports. The P66 is a “key supply route for the northern section of Russia’s Donbas front from the Belgorod region of Russia” and its use has been disrupted by Ukrainian artillery since October, the ministry adds.
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Following overnight strikes on Kyiv, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged, causing power and heating outages, Klitschko said on Monday.
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Ukraine’s most senior defence officials have said they believe Russia will attempt a second invasion from the north in the next couple of months, using troops who have been training for the past three months since being mobilised in October. But the Ukrainian forces defending the border say the Russians will not be able to break through as they did in February, when the Sumy region had no defensive lines.
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Russia claimed that its strikes on Ukraine on New Year’s Eve – including the launch of more than 20 cruise missiles that killed at least three people – were targeting its neighbour’s drone production. A children’s hospital was among the buildings said to have been hit by Russian shelling. Ukrainian officials claim Russia is deliberately targeting civilians.
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The Kyiv Independent has reported that “25 torture chambers” have been discovered in the liberated areas of Kharkiv Oblast. The Guardian was not able to independently verify this report.
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Russian leaders issued a series of defiant messages ahead of the new year. 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”.
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Zelenskiy said he was waiting for 2023’s first tranche of European Union (EU) macrofinancial aid in January after speaking to European Comission head Ursula von der Leyen on Monday. Writing on Twitter, Zelenskiy thanked Von der Leyen for her support and said the two leaders coordinated steps on a Ukraine-EU summit.
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A New Year’s Eve video address from Christine Lambrecht, the German defence minister, in which she said the conflict in Ukraine had led to “a lot of special experiences” as fireworks exploded in the background, has been widely criticised.
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The suspected mastermind behind the removal of a Banksy mural in a Ukrainian town could face up to 12 years in prison if found guilty, Ukraine’s interior ministry has said.
Images are coming to us of the humanitarian mission Black Tulip to exhume bodies of fallen Ukrainian soldiers in Yampil.
Artur Simeiko 26, can be seen cleaning a credit card found on the body of a fallen Ukrainian soldier.
Black Tulip searches, exhumes and retrieves bodies of both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers on the battlefield. The bodies of the deceased Russian soldiers they find are exchanged for the bodies of deceased Ukrainian soldiers to return to their families, Reuters reports.
The suspected mastermind behind the removal of a Banksy mural in a Ukrainian town could face up to 12 years in prison if found guilty, Ukraine’s interior ministry has said.
Reuters reports that the artwork, depicting a woman in a gas mask and a dressing gown holding a fire extinguisher, was taken off a wall in the town of Hostomel on 2 December, according to officials.
The ministry announced on its website that the man it believes orchestrated the operation had been handed a “suspicion notice”.
The artwork by the renowned British artist had been valued at over 9m hryvnia ($243,900), the ministry statement said.
“The criminals tried to transport this graffito with the help of wooden boards and polyethylene,” it said. “Thanks to the concern of citizens, the police and other security forces managed to arrest the criminals.”
The mural was retrieved.
Banksy confirmed that he had painted the mural and six others in places that were hit by heavy fighting after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
A New Year’s Eve video address from Christine Lambrecht, the German defence minister, in which she said the conflict in Ukraine had led to “a lot of special experiences” as fireworks exploded in the background, has been widely criticised.
In the message filmed on the streets of Berlin, Lambrecht, who is barely audible above the fireworks, reflected on a year ending with “war raging in the middle of Europe”.
She said that the war had offered the chance for “many encounters with great and interesting people”, Agence France-Presse reports.
In a scathing commentary headlined “Lambrecht is no longer tenable as a minister”, Tagesspiegel, a German daily newspaper, wrote that her New Year’s Eve address made the war sound like an “exciting professional experience”.
The minute-long message, filmed on a mobile phone, “shamed” Germany, the newspaper Bild said.
In the context of the war in Ukraine, the video was “inappropriate and embarrassing”, Der Spiegel magazine wrote.
At a regular press conference, a spokesperson for the defence ministry declined to comment on the “private video” put out by Lambrecht. They would only say that “no official resources” were used in the production of the clip.
The deputy leader of the conservative opposition group (CDU) in parliament, Johann Wadephul, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that Lambrecht’s “disturbing video” showed she did not have the right “attitude” for the office she holds.
Moscow says 63 Russian soldiers died in an attack on their barracks amid claims the death toll could be higher.
That’s it from me, Tom Ambrose, for today. Thanks for following along. My colleague Jane Clinton will be along shortly to continue bringing you all the latest news from Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Isobel Koshiw
On 24 February, when Russia invaded, there were only a few dozen Ukrainian professional soldiers in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Sumy, and they had no command centre. That evening, those 50 or so paratroopers were ordered to leave the city – 30km from the Russian border – for another area. Most of the police force had already fled, along with much of the city’s leadership.
Sumy’s residents were left, confused and in shock, to defend the city on their own as Russian forces rolled towards them. The Sumy self-defence forces, which formed for the most part on the first day of the invasion, managed to hold the city for almost six weeks, despite being encircled. After 6 April, the Russian forces were pushed out of Sumy region, and most of the self-defence forces members then joined the army where they are now serving.
Sumy region borders Russia on two sides, to the north and east. The efforts of Sumy self-defence forces and ordinary residents inside and outside the city contributed to the disruption of the Russian supply lines from the Russian border to Kyiv. Their efforts helped prevent Russian forces from successfully surrounding the capital and seizing control of the country’s command centre.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has commended Sumy’s territorial defence forces several times. In his New Year’s Eve address, the equivalent of the queen or king’s Christmas Day speech in Britain, Zelenskiy singled out Sumy’s resistance efforts, describing how ordinary residents became the “bone in the throat” of the Russians.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he was waiting for 2023’s first tranche of European Union (EU) macrofinancial aid in January after speaking to European Comission head Ursula von der Leyen on Monday.
Writing on Twitter, Zelenskiy thanked Von der Leyen for her support and said the two leaders coordinated steps on a Ukraine-EU summit.
Glad to start the year talking to @vonderleyen. Thanked for the EU support. Waiting for the 1st tranche of macro-fin aid in Jan, the 1st batch of LED-lamps, school buses, generators & modular houses. Coordinated steps on 🇺🇦🇪🇺 Summit. We feel support & will win together.
— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 2, 2023
Russian defence ministry says 63 servicemen killed in Makiivka
Russia’s defence ministry said that 63 Russian servicemen had been killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on their temporary accommodation in the town of Makiivka, in the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
More to follow on this as it develops.
Summary
The time in Kyiv is just coming up to 3pm. Here is a brief round-up of the day’s main news stories so far:
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A New Year’s Day attack on a complex in the Russian-controlled city of Makiivka killed scores of recently mobilised troops sent by Moscow, according to reports on both sides, in what could be one of the deadliest known incidents involving Russian conscripts 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 Moscow-controlled parts of the Donetsk region. Pro-Russian authorities late on Sunday acknowledged that there were casualties, but did not comment on the Ukrainian figures.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has praised Ukrainians for showing gratitude to the troops and one another and said Russia’s efforts would prove useless. “Drones, missiles, everything else will not help them,” he said of the Russians. “Because we stand united. They are united only by fear.” Ukraine’s air defence systems worked through the night to bring down incoming drones and to warn communities of the approaching danger, Reuters reported.
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Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and surrounding areas early on Monday morning. Air raid alerts were issued in Kyiv and across eastern Ukraine, beginning just before midnight and still wailing hours later. Debris from a destroyed drone hit Kyiv’s northeastern Desnianskiy district, wounding a 19-year-old man who was later taken to hospital, the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
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The Ukrainian ministry of defence claimed it shot down 39 Iranian-made Shahed drones, as well as a cruise missile, last night. Earlier, we reported that Ukraine’s regional military command in the country’s east said air defence systems destroyed nine Iranian-made Shahed drones over the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions by the early hours of Monday. Zelenskiy, added that “45 ‘Shaheds’ were shot down on the first night of the year” in his Monday evening address.
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Ukraine has published the latest figures in relation to Russian losses since the beginning of the invasion last February. It says an estimated 107,440 Russian soldiers have been killed, while it claims to have destroyed 283 aircraft and more than 3,000 Russian tanks.
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Over the last five days, Russian and Ukrainian forces have probably been fighting for control of the P66 highway, north of the Russian-held Luhansk town of Kremina, the UK Ministry of Defence reports. The P66 is a “key supply route for the northern section of Russia’s Donbas front from the Belgorod region of Russia” and its use has been disrupted by Ukrainian artillery since October, the ministry adds.
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As a result of overnight strikes on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged, causing power and heating outages, city mayor Klitschko said on Monday.
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Ukraine’s most senior defence officials have said they believe Russia will attempt a second invasion from the north in the next couple of months, using troops who have been training for the past three months since being mobilised in October. But the Ukrainian forces defending the border say the Russians will not be able to break through as they did in February, when the Sumy region had no defensive lines.
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Russia claimed its strikes against Ukraine on New Year’s Eve – including the launch of more than 20 cruise missiles that killed at least three people – were targeting its neighbour’s drone production. A children’s hospital was among the buildings said to have been hit by Russian shelling. Ukrainian officials claim Russia is deliberately targeting civilians to sow fear.
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Russian leaders issued a series of defiant messages ahead of the new year. 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”.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has praised Ukrainians for showing gratitude to the troops and one another and said Russia’s efforts would prove useless.
“Drones, missiles, everything else will not help them,” he said of the Russians. “Because we stand united. They are united only by fear.”
Ukraine’s air defence systems worked through the night to bring down incoming drones and to warn communities of the approaching danger, Reuters reported.
“It is loud in the region and in the capital: night drone attacks,” Kyiv governor Oleksiy Kuleba said. “Russians launched several waves of Shahed drones. Targeting critical infrastructure facilities. Air defence is at work.”
Russia, which has seized and claims to have annexed about a fifth of Ukraine, has turned to mass air strikes against Ukrainian cities since suffering humiliating defeats on the battlefield in the second half of 2022.
