Ukraine has claimed responsibility for the New Year’s Day attack on a complex in the Russian-held city of Makiivka. “On December 31, in the town of Makiivka in the eastern Donetsk region, up to 10 units of enemy military equipment of various types were destroyed and damaged,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement. The human “losses” were said to be determined.
The attack on Makiivka killed dozens of recently mobilized troops dispatched from Moscow, in one of the deadliest known incidents involving Russian conscripts to date. The Ukrainian military command said up to 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the incident in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, but this claim has not been independently confirmed. Russia’s Defense Ministry said 63 Russian soldiers died when Ukraine hit “a temporary deployment facility” with four US-supplied Himars missiles.
Satellite images taken by the US company Planet Labs, allegedly showing the aftermath of the attack on Makiivka, have been circulated on the Internet, showing the building allegedly housing the Russian troops before and after the hit. The pictures from January 2nd show a building almost completely razed to the ground. Unconfirmed footage posted online of the aftermath of the blast also showed a huge building reduced to smoking rubble.
Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in and around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early Monday morning. Debris from a destroyed drone hit Kyiv’s northeastern Desnianskiy district, injuring a 19-year-old man who was later taken to hospital, the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Energy infrastructure facilities in the city were damaged, leading to power and heating outages.
Ukraine claims to have destroyed 40 Russian drones en route to Kyiv on Sunday night, with 15 destroyed over neighboring regions, three in the Kyiv region and 22 directly over the capital. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country’s armed forces had shot down more than 80 drones since early 2023.
Russia is planning a protracted attack campaign using Iranian drones to “deplete” Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned in his speech on Monday evening. “It’s probably due to exhaustion. It exhausts our people, our anti-aircraft defenses, our energy.” Ukraine must “act and do everything possible so that the terrorists miss their target, as all their others have failed”.
Zelenskyi said he expects the first tranche of EU macro-financial assistance to arrive in January after a conversation with EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Monday. Zelenskiy thanked von der Leyen for her support, adding that the €18 billion ($19 billion) financial support is “extremely important at a time when Russia is trying to rally new forces for aggression.”
Ukraine and the European Union will hold a summit in Kyiv on February 3 to discuss financial and military assistance, Zelenskyy’s office said in a statement on Monday. “The parties discussed the expected results of the next Ukraine-EU summit, which will be held in Kyiv on February 3, and agreed to intensify preparatory work,” the statement said.