A new air attack targeted kyiv this Monday, January 2 at dawn, after a New Year’s Day marked by dozens of Russian strikes which left at least four dead in the capital and elsewhere in the country.
- Over 60 Russian soldiers killed in strike near Donetsk
These are the heaviest losses in a single attack admitted by Moscow since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Russia acknowledged on Monday the death of 63 of its soldiers, killed in a Ukrainian strike in separatist territory in the east of the country. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the soldiers were killed in the explosion of “four missiles” fired by HIMARS systems, a weapon supplied by the United States to the Ukrainian forces. Until now, the Russian army has only very rarely given an assessment of its offensive or communicated on its losses.
According to the spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, who did not specify the date of the strike, these missiles hit “a temporary deployment center” of the Russian army in Makivka, a city under Russian occupation. located east of the separatist city of Donetsk. The ministry also claimed to have shot down two of the six missiles fired at this target at Makiivka.
The Ukrainian general staff admitted to having carried out this strike, carried out according to him before the New Year on December 31, destroying or damaging up to 10 vehicles. “The losses in terms of personnel for the occupants are being specified,” he said.
- A new air attack on kyiv
“Stay in the shelters!” asked on Telegram in the night from Sunday to Monday Sergei Popko, head of the military administration of the city of kyiv. This administration then reported that “20 aerial targets were shot down”. “The air defense is working… Fragments of balconies and windows of a skyscraper were damaged in the Desnyanskyi district”, in the northeast of the capital, Sergei Popko continued. The alert was lifted almost three hours later. “The Russians launched several waves of Shahed drones,” said Oelksii Kuleba, head of the Kyiv region’s military administration, referring to the Iranian-made explosive drones. “They are targeting critical infrastructure,” he added. According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, a 19-year-old man was injured by shards of glass in Desnyanskyi district and taken to hospital.
- Strikes over New Year’s weekend
Shortly before and after the transition to 2023, bombings on kyiv and seven other regions had already killed at least four people and injured 50, according to Ukrainian authorities. For its part, Moscow claimed to have targeted unmanned aircraft manufacturing facilities.
In central kyiv, a missile ripped through the facade of a hotel on New Year’s Eve, while local police chief Andriy Nebitov posted a photograph on Facebook showing what appeared to be the remains of a a drone with the words “Happy New Year” written in Russian. The Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have shot down 45 Shahed drones overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
Then, during the day on Sunday, “the enemy carried out 35 air strikes, using in particular the drone ‘Shahed-136′”, and all the missiles fired by Russia were destroyed, the state announced in the evening. major in the Ukrainian army. “The Russian occupiers”, he added, furthermore “fired 16 times with multiple rocket launchers, in particular at the children’s hospital in Kherson”, a southern city regularly bombarded since it was taken over in the fall by Ukrainian soldiers. The Russians “are losing. Drones, missiles and everything else will not help them. Because we are together”, reacted Sunday evening President Volodymyr Zelensky. “And they won’t take a single year away from Ukraine, they won’t take away our independence. We won’t give them anything. We respond to every Russian strike […] on all our cities and communities,” he said.
- The Russian army continues its offensive in the Donetsk region
The General Staff of the Ukrainian forces underlined in this respect on Sunday evening that “the enemy […] continued to attempt attacks in the Bakhmout sector”, a city in this region which the Russians have been trying to seize for more than six months, at the cost of heavy losses on both sides and unimaginable destruction.
The soldiers engaged in this battle are subjected to an “incredible fatigue” moral and physical. And in this endless war of attrition, some end up seeing themselves “like meat, just good enough to be sent to death”, explained on the spot to AFP Mark Kouptchenenko, a young Ukrainian military chaplain who will all days at the front. There are no or very few rotations, “they are constantly in combat”, under enormous pressure, subject to orders that sometimes they no longer understand, he said.
- Russia: gas exports outside the former Soviet bloc have fallen
Gazprom’s gas exports, excluding countries of the former Soviet bloc, fell by 45.5% in 2022, according to results announced on Monday, after a year marked by a sharp drop in deliveries to Europe in the stride of Western sanctions against the offensive in Ukraine.
In a statement, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said the group exported 100.9 billion cubic meters of gas in 2022 to “far abroad” countries, a term that does not include former Soviet republics. . In 2021, Gazprom had exported 185.1 billion cubic meters to these same countries.
After the economic sanctions taken by the West against Russia, in reaction to its military intervention in Ukraine, Moscow sharply reduced its hydrocarbon exports to the EU. In early December, the European Union, G7 countries and Australia also agreed to cap the price of Russian oil exports at $60 a barrel, hoping to deprive Moscow of revenue. important. In response, Russia announced that it would ban from February 1 the sale of its oil to foreign countries that use its oil cap.
Elsewhere, the wholesale price of natural gas in Europe fell to its lowest level since the start of the war in Ukraine on Monday, continuing its decline thanks to a relatively warm winter which is helping to save stocks. The benchmark contract for the continent, the TTF on the Dutch market, fell another 4.67% to 72.75 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) for delivery in February, around 9:35 a.m. on Monday morning, i.e. the price on lowest since February 21, 2022. The price of gas, for delivery the following month, has lost almost 50% in one month… and has largely come down from the peaks of the summer: in August 2022, it had peaked at 342 euros per megawatt hour.
- Cardinal Aveline denounces “the frightening cynicism” of Russia
In a prayer for peace on Sunday in Marseille, Cardinal Aveline denounced the “frightening cynicism” of the Russian government in Ukraine such as the repression of Rohingya Muslims in Burma or the tragedy of migrants in the Mediterranean. But Bishop Aveline also made a point of praying for the Russian people “because all peoples, whatever their leaders say, often too corrupt to be clear-sighted, ask for peace and not war”.