President Vladimir Putin told Russians in a new year address that the country would move forward with confidence in 2025.
Mr Putin’s seasonal message was being broadcast at midnight in each of Russia’s 11 time zones, starting with Kamchatka and Chukotka in the far east.
He said Russia had strengthened its unity in the first quarter of the 21st century, achieving significant goals and overcoming trials.
“And now, on the threshold of the new year, we are thinking about the future. We are confident that everything will be fine, we will only move forward. We know for sure that the absolute value for us was, is and will be the fate of Russia, the wellbeing of its citizens,” he said.
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Mr Putin paid tribute to Russian soldiers fighting in the war in Ukraine, describing them as “true heroes”, but did not refer in detail to the state of the conflict or make predictions for how the battlefield situation would evolve in 2025.
Ukraine said on Tuesday it had downed six of 21 missiles launched overnight and in the early morning by Russia, reporting minor damage in the capital of Kyiv and hits on infrastructure in the northern Sumy region.
A woman was wounded in the Kyiv region, where a private house was damaged, the interior ministry said on Telegram. Missile debris damaged three private buildings and two cars in one of the capital’s districts, Kyiv’s military administration said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal missile was among the six downed. Ukrainian military intelligence also said on Tuesday that one of its naval drones had destroyed a Russian helicopter and damaged another one in the Black Sea.
In a battle near Cape Tarkhankut on Crimea’s west coast on Tuesday, a Magura V5 maritime drone equipped with missiles hit a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, Ukraine’s GUR spy agency.
GUR said it was the first time a Ukrainian naval drone had downed an air target. Reuters could not independently verify the report.
There was no comment from Moscow on the helicopter. Russia’s defence ministry said its Black Sea Fleet destroyed eight unmanned drone vessels.
Russia fired a total of 13 missiles on the town of Shostka, in the northern Sumy region, its governor said in televised comments.
The strike damaged 12 high-rise residential buildings, two educational facilities, three boiler houses and a clinic, according to local authorities. Some infrastructure was destroyed, it added.
Moscow’s forces also used 40 drones to attack the country. Air defence units shot down 16 of them and 24 more failed to reach targets, Ukraine’s air force said.
Russia’s defence ministry said t had carried a strike at a military airfield infrastructure and gunpowder charges production facility in Ukraine on Tuesday morning. It said all targets had been hit. – Reuters
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