Early in the morning of December 29, Russia launched a major series of attacks on several cities across Ukraine, particularly against the capital Kiev as well as Kharkiv (northeast), Dnipro (east), and Lviv (west) or Odessa (south). According to a preliminary assessment by Ukrainian officials, these attacks left at least 12 people dead in six different regions of the country, Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said. Five people were killed in the Dnipropetrovsk region (central east), two in Odessa (south), two in Kiev, one in Lviv (west), one in Zaporizhzhia (south) and one in Kharkiv (northeast), the minister explained Networks. Follow our live stream.
More than a hundred rockets were fired. “The enemy used 158 means of air strike against Ukraine last night: missiles of various types and drones,” the Air Force said on the Telegram network, adding that it destroyed 114 targets. “Today Russia has used almost all types of weapons in its arsenal,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Ukraine calls for “more aid and resources”. “We are doing everything we can to strengthen our air defense,” Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, said Friday morning. “But the world must realize that we need more help and resources to stop this terror,” he added in a message published on the social network Telegram asking the international community for help.
The whole country is on alert. A nationwide air alert was sounded around 7 a.m. (local time), while explosions were heard in Kiev, where mayor Vitali Klitschko said “air defenses were actively deployed.” Russian attacks on Thursday left three dead and nine injured in two villages in the Zaporizhia region of southern Ukraine, local authorities said.