Russia-Ukraine war: Kyiv targeted by drones, energy facilities damaged causing power and heating outages – live

Key events

Power and heating outages in Kyiv

As a result of overnight strikes on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged, causing power and heating outages, city mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Monday.

As a result of night shelling of the capital, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged. There were emergency power outages in the city. Accordingly, there are de-energised heat supply facilities,” he wrote in an update to early on Monday morning.

Klitschko added that Kyiv’s water supply has been unaffected.

Russian drones target Kyiv

Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and surrounding areas early on Monday morning.

Air raid alerts were issued in Kyiv and across eastern Ukraine, beginning just before midnight and still wailing hours later.

Kyiv regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said in an update issued to Telegram about 3am (0100 GMT) local time:

It is loud in the region and in the capital: night drone attacks.

Russians launched several waves of [Iranian-made] Shahed drones. Targeting critical infrastructure facilities. Air defence is at work.”

Debris from a destroyed drone hit Kyiv’s northeastern Desnianskiy district, wounding a 19-year-old man who was later taken to hospital, the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The district, located on the left bank of the Dnieper River, is chiefly a residential area and the capital’s most populous district.

Local residents stand near a crater after a rocket on Kyiv, Ukraine on 1 January.
Local residents stand near a crater after a rocket on Kyiv, Ukraine on 1 January. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

By 3am local time, the city’s military administration reported that 20 “aerial targets” were shot down above Kyiv by Ukraine’s air defence systems.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, shared a photo of the wreckage purportedly inflicted from a fallen drone in Kyiv’s Desnyanskyi district.

“Falling of UAV wreckage on the roadway. The windows in the house next door were damaged,” he wrote alongside the image posted to his Telegram channel around 1am on Monday.

Summary and welcome

Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be bringing you all the latest developments as they unfold over the next few hours.

Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv and surrounding areas early on Monday morning.

As a result of the overnight strikes, energy infrastructure facilities were damaged, causing power and heating outages, city mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

For any updates or feedback you wish to share, please feel free to get in touch via email or Twitter.

If you have just joined us, here are all the latest developments:

  • Several waves of Russian drones targeted critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv early on Monday with debris from a destroyed drone wounding one, the city’s mayor has said. Air raid sirens were announced just before midnight and explosions were reported in the capital’s northeastern Desnianskiy district with a 19-year-old man taken to hospital. The city military administration reported that 20 aerial targets were shot down by Ukraine’s air defence over Monday night.

  • Ukraine’s regional military command in the country’s east said air defence systems destroyed nine Iranian-made Shahed drones over the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions by the early hours of Monday. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy added that “45 ‘Shaheds’ were shot down on the first night of the year,” in his Monday evening address.

  • Ukraine’s most senior defence officials have said they believe Russia will attempt a second invasion from the north in the next couple of months, using troops who have been training for the past three months since being mobilised in October. But the Ukrainian forces defending the border say the Russians will not be able to break through as they did in February, when the Sumy region had no defensive lines. Both Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksii Reznikov, and the commander-in-chief of its armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, have named February as a possible period for attempted re-invasion.

  • Russia has claimed Ukraine’s forces shelled the city of Makiivka and other areas in the Donetsk region of Ukraine of which it occupies. The Moscow-installed administration of the Donetsk region said on Sunday that at least 25 rockets were fired at the region overnight on New Year’s Eve with reports saying that military quarters were hit, killing many. Daniil Bezsonov, a senior Russian-backed official in the region, said that there was a “massive blow” on a vocational school, which according to preliminary information served as military personnel quarters. “There were dead and wounded, the exact number is still unknown,” Bezsonov said on the Telegram messaging app.

  • Zelenskiy said his only wish for Ukrainians for 2023 was for victory as he resolved to stay the course. “I want to wish all of us one thing – victory,” he said in a video message shortly before midnight on Saturday. Zelenskiy reiterated that he would stay with his people while they were fighting for freedom. “We were told to surrender. We chose a counterattack,” he said. “We are ready to fight for it [freedom]. That’s why each of us is here. I’m here, we are here, you are here, everyone is here. We are all Ukraine.”

  • Russia claimed its strikes against Ukraine on New Year’s Eve – including the launch of more than 20 cruise missiles that killed at least three people – were targeting its neighbour’s drone production. A children’s hospital was among the buildings said to have been hit by Russian shelling. Ukrainian officials claim Russia is deliberately targeting civilians to sow fear.

  • Russian leaders issued a series of defiant messages ahead of the new year. President Vladimir Putin said Russia would “never give in” to the west, and was fighting for its “motherland, truth and justice … so that Russia’s security can be guaranteed”.

source: theguardian.com