Kyiv accused Moscow of “senseless barbarism” after its forces fired scores of missiles at Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, and Russian officials said no peace talks were feasible until Ukraine accepted Kremlin control over swathes of its territory.
At least two people were killed and several injured on Thursday by Russia’s latest salvo of long-range rockets and drones, and more blackouts swept across Ukraine due to fresh strikes on power stations and other elements of its badly damaged national grid.
“The enemy keeps resorting to missile terror against the peaceful citizens of Ukraine. This morning, the aggressor launched air and sea-based cruise missiles [and] anti-aircraft guided missiles ... at energy infrastructure facilities of our country,” Ukraine’s military said in a statement.
“According to preliminary data, 69 missiles were launched in total. Fifty-four enemy cruise missiles were shot down by assets of the defence forces of Ukraine. We will hold out and win!”
Hungarian leader Viktor Orban gives insight to his ‘lonely’ worldview
The Irish Times view on Trump and Ukraine: Change of course is ahead
US pledges to send as much aid as possible to Ukraine before Trump becomes president
Ukraine facing ‘50,000 Russian troops’ in border area as North Korea ratifies defence pact with Moscow
Oleh Synehubov, governor of the Kharkiv region, said at least two people had been killed by four missiles fired at critical infrastructure in the northeastern region.
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said 40 per cent of the city’s residents were without power as engineers conducted emergency repair work, and that heat and water supplies in most of the capital were unaffected.
Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv near the Polish border, said “90 per cent of the city is without electricity ... Trams and trolleybuses are not running in the city. There may be interruptions in the water supply. We are switching to the work of diesel generators at critical infrastructure facilities.”
The governor of the wider Lviv region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said air defence systems shot down four missiles over the province, but “there were two strikes on an electrical substation. There are 282 settlements [in the region] without electricity, 76 of them partially cut off ... Power engineers are working to restore light and water to every home.”
Ukraine’s defence ministry said Russia had “saved one of the most massive missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion for the last days of the year. They dream that Ukrainians will celebrate the New Year in darkness and cold. But they cannot defeat the Ukrainian people.”
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba called the latest attacks “senseless barbarism. These are the only words that come to mind seeing Russia launch another missile barrage at peaceful Ukrainian cities ahead of New Year. There can be no ‘neutrality’ in the face of such mass war crimes. Pretending to be ‘neutral’ equals taking Russia’s side.”
[ Daniel McLaughlin: Irish-funded heart surgeons and Ukraine's 'miracle kid'Opens in new window ]
Kyiv and western states say Russia’s political and military leaders must face trial for war crimes over their country’s repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, and for atrocities committed in areas occupied by the Kremlin’s forces.
Moscow admits attacking Ukraine’s national grid but claims it is a legitimate target because it sustains the country’s war effort, powering industrial and transport infrastructure 10 months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions.
Ukrainian leaders have aired a 10-point peace plan and called for an international peace conference in February, but Russia says the war will not end until Kyiv accepts its claim to sovereignty over four Ukrainian regions that Moscow’s troops now partly control – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – and the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
“There can’t be any Ukrainian peace plan that fails to take into account today’s realities regarding Russian territory, the incorporation of the four new regions into Russia. Any plan that fails to acknowledge these realities can’t be considered a peace plan,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
