2023-12-29 18:06:29
A shopping center severely damaged by a Russian strike, in Dnipro, December 29, 2023. STATE EMERGENCY SERVICE OF UKRAI / VIA REUTERS
Russia launched a vast series of strikes on several cities in Ukraine, including the capital, kyiv, on the morning of Friday, December 29. « a record number of missiles ». According to a latest report, which risks getting worse, Russian fire left at least eighteen dead and 132 injured, said the national police Ukrainian, qwho specifies that people may still be under the rubble.
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The attacks particularly targeted the capital, kyiv, as well as the towns of Dnipropetrovsk (Center-East), Kharkiv (North-East), Lviv (West), Zaporizhia (South) and Odessa (South).
“Russia has used almost every type of weapon in its arsenal”said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the social network According to the Air Force, 158 missiles and drones were fired at Ukraine, of which 114 were destroyed. “This is the most massive missile attack”excluding the first days of the war, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat told Agence France-Presse.
NATO member Poland said one of the Russian missiles fired at Ukraine briefly passed through its airspace in the morning. “ He left this space” immediately, in the direction of Ukraine, declared the chief of the general staff, Wieslaw Kukula.
General Wieslaw Kukula, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, arrives for a security council in Warsaw December 29, 2023. DAWID ZUCHOWICZ / AGENCJA WYBORC / AGENCJA WYBORCZA.PL VIA REUTERS
A condemned “strategy of terror”
The strikes hit “civil installations, civil buildings”said Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff. “The world must see that we need more help and means to stop this terror”, he added on Telegram.
A word taken up by the American ambassadorBridget Brink, according to which “Ukraine needs funds now to continue fighting”. On Wednesday, Washington released the last tranche of military aid granted to kyiv until further notice by the American Congress.
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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said these strikes demonstrated that Vladimir Putin “will stop at nothing”, while France condemned “with the greatest firmness” a “strategy of terror”.
Denouncing “cowardly strikes”the head of diplomacy of the European Union, Josep Borrell, promised that the European Union “will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes”. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on Moscow to “put an immediate end to these attacks” et “to respect international laws governing conflicts”.
“All targets have been achieved”
Russia limited itself to ensuring, in its daily briefing, that “all targets have been achieved”. She claimed to have targeted military infrastructure, ammunition depots and places of deployment of Ukrainian soldiers during more than fifty strikes, including one “large” between December 23 and 29.
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The United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, condemned on “a hateful wave of attacks”illustrating “the horrible reality” experienced by Ukrainians.
In kyiv, a 3,000 square meter hangar was set on fire in the Podil district. A metro station used as an air raid shelter was damaged, as well as several apartment buildings and other hangars. A maternity hospital in Dnipro was also “severely damaged”but without victims, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.
The wave of Russian strikes ends a difficult year for Ukraine, marked by the failure of its summer counter-offensive and a resumption of initiative by Moscow’s forces, who this week claimed the capture of the town of Marïnka on the eastern front. They also occur in a context of running out of Western aid to kyiv, both in Europe and in the United States, threatening the country with a shortage of ammunition and funds.
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