by MoA
On the 29th of December Russia fired swarms of drones and missiles against Ukrainian weapon factories and depots.
Ukraine responded on new year’s eve with a missile attack against the Russian city of Belgorod. The attack led to a number of civilian casualties.
Russia responded with attacks on Kharkiv where a hotel frequently used by western personnel was destroyed.
On new year’s eve Ukraine also fired missiles into the center of Donetzk city. Russia launched dozens of drones towards Odessa. In both cities several people were killed and wounded.
President Putin of Russia began the year with a visit to a military hospital (in Russian, machine translation):
On January 1 of the new year, Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived at the Central Military Clinical Hospital named after A. A. Vishnevsky. Not just like that, but with an inspection and a conversation with military personnel wounded during a special military operation. A frank conversation, with uncomfortable questions.
…
Putin, in response to a question from another military officer, also commented on the massive enemy strike on Belgorod on December 30. He did not hold back his emotions and directly called the incident a terrorist act.Targeted attack on the civilian population. Of course, this is a terrorist attack. Should we respond like this? Of course we can. We can hit the squares in Kiev and any other city. Denis, there are children walking there, mummies with strollers. I understand… I’m seething myself. I want to ask you something. Do we need to do this?
In response, the military explained that he does not talk about strikes on civilians. He believes that it is necessary to hit the military, infrastructure: “We need a strike to once and for all, so that they can not come to their senses and respond to us already.”
And that’s what we do. You noticed that just the next day such strikes were delivered. And today, in my opinion, they are applied. And tomorrow they will be,
– Putin promised.
The President reminded that we use high-precision weapons to hit places where the enemy makes decisions, places where military personnel, mercenaries gather, and other similar centers.
First of all, for military facilities. And they are quite sensitive, these blows. So we will do it. You probably noticed that just the next day such strikes were delivered. And today, in my opinion, they are applied. And tomorrow we will do it. You know what the point of what they do is: they want to: a) intimidate us and b) create some kind of uncertainty in our country. But we, for our part, will step up the strikes I mentioned. Definitely. No such crime – and it is certainly a crime – against the civilian population will go unpunished. This is 100%. There can be no doubt about it.
Patrick Armstrong reminds everyone to listen to what Putin says.
This morning a total of four waves with probably hundreds of drones and missiles hit Kiev and other Ukrainian cities.
First came geranium suicide drones to exhaust Ukrainian air defenses. Then followed cruise and ballistic missile strikes (machine translation):
The current attack, apparently, was a complex one – first “Shahids” and cruise missiles from strategic bombers tried to calculate the air defense positions, and then the strike was followed by faster and more accurate “Daggers”. It is possible that again, as in May last year, the Russians “hunted” air defense systems in this way.But, again, there is no official data on which objects were used for arrivals. Zaluzhny said that civilian and critical infrastructure, industrial and military facilities were attacked.
Russian military publications say that the strikes were aimed at ammunition depots and drones. But so far there is no confirmation of this.
At the same time, judging by the videos published in social networks, the damage to warehouses in Kiev is serious. According to Klitschko, 2,000 square meters of warehouses were engulfed in fire in the morning.
Debris from air defenses killed and wounded a number of people.
The Ukrainians claimed that they intercepted most of the incoming weapons:
Ukraine Battle Map @ukraine_map – 9:56 UTC · Jan 2, 2024Full Breakdown of missiles and drones shot down by Ukraine on January 2nd
10/10 or (100%) of Kinzhal Missiles
59/70 or (84.3%) of X-101 Missiles
3/3 or (100%) of Kalibr Missiles
0/12 or (0%) of Ballistic Missiles
0/4 or (0%) of Kh-31P Missiles
35/35 or (100%) of Shahed Drones
Reality disagrees with those claims. Video from the ground showed Kinzhal impacts.
As Strana remarked yesterday (machine translation):
