In the first hours of 2023, fresh explosions could be heard in Kyiv and across Ukraine, minutes after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a New Year’s speech in which he wished for only one thing: victory.
Kiev’s city military administration said 23 “air objects” launched by Russia were destroyed, while Mayor Vitali Klitschko said preliminary reports indicated there were no wounded or casualties, just a damaged car in the city center.
As air raid sirens blared across the country and air defenses deployed, some people in Kyiv shouted from their balconies: “Honour to Ukraine! Honor the heroes!” Portal witnesses reported. In Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, an 11pm curfew had already ruled out large New Year’s parties, many of which celebrated the moment in shelters.
There were also unofficial reports of explosions in the southern Kherson region and northern Zhytomyr region.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his wife Olena Zelenska address the Ukrainian people on New Year’s Day. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesThe attacks came minutes after Zelenskyi delivered his first New Year’s speech of the war, with no end to the conflict in sight. He said: “2022 has touched our hearts. We all cried tears. All prayers were shouted. 311 days. We have something to say every minute. But most of the words are superfluous. No explanation required. It takes silence to hear. Pauses are necessary to recognize.
“We don’t know exactly what new things the year 2023 will bring us. I just want to wish all of us one thing – victory. And that is the main thing.
“Let this year be the year of return. The return of our people. Soldiers – to their families. Prisoners – home. Immigrants – to their Ukraine. The return of our country. And the temporarily occupied become free forever.
“Back to normal life. To happy moments without a curfew. To earthly delights without an air alarm. The return of what was stolen from us. The childhood of our children, the peaceful old age of our parents.
“May the new year bring everything. We are ready to fight for it. That’s why each of us is here. I am here, we are here, you are here – everyone is here. We are all Ukraine.”
The New Year’s attacks followed a barrage of more than 20 cruise missiles fired at targets across Ukraine on Saturday in what Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets described as “New Year’s Eve terror.”
Ukrainian soldiers share a toast to celebrate New Year’s Eve at a military rest house in the Donetsk region. Photo: Clodagh Kilcoyne/PortalSaturday’s attack – Moscow’s second major rocket attack in three days – severely damaged a hotel south of central Kiev and an apartment building in another district. A Japanese journalist who was taken to the hospital was among the injured, Klitschko said.
Zelenskyy responded to Saturday’s attacks – and Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s speech, in which he accused the West of provoking the war – with a message to the Russian people delivered in Russian. “Their leader wants to show he has the troops behind, he’s ahead. But he’s hiding. He hides behind the troops, rockets, his residences, palaces. He hides behind you, burns your country, your future,” said Zelenskyy. “No one will forgive terror. Nobody in the world will forgive you. Ukraine will not forgive.”
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of southern Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said independently that there was damage to houses but no casualties as a result of the night shelling of the outskirts of the town of Shebekino.
Ukraine has never publicly claimed responsibility for any attacks within Russia, calling it “karma” for Russia’s invasion.
With Portal