(Kyiv) Two people were killed and seven injured on Wednesday in Kyiv during strikes by the Russian army, which launched a wave of 111 drones on Ukraine for New Year’s Day, authorities announced.
Posted at 7:43 a.m.
Updated at 9:17 a.m.
This Russian attack on the first day of 2025 comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had expressed the day before, in his wishes, the wish that this year be the year of negotiations which will have to “end the war”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened, at the end of December, to strike the center of Kyiv in response to the use of American and British long-range weapons on his country.
“Two people were killed and seven others injured in a Russian drone attack in Kyiv. I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims. The enemy deliberately attacked the capital on New Year’s Eve,” Prime Minister Denys Chmygal said on Telegram.
PHOTO OKSANA JOHANNESSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Debris is seen on a street after a Russian drone attack in Kyiv, Ukraine on 1is January 2025.
According to him, “most” of the Russian drones did not reach their target.
Debris from downed drones sparked a fire that damaged a residential building and an administrative building in the Pechersk district of the capital’s historic city center.
The building belongs to the Ukrainian National Bank, according to the latter, located 300 meters from the presidential offices.
“Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia only cares about harming Ukraine,” Volodymyr Zelensky reacted on Telegram.
AFP journalists heard multiple, powerful explosions in the city center of the capital on Wednesday morning.
PHOTO UKRAINIAN EMERGENCY SERVICES, PROVIDED BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Rescue workers working at the site of a Russian drone attack on a residential building in Kyiv.
Fighting “at the negotiating table”
Another fire caused by drone debris was extinguished in the Svyatoshin district, on the outskirts of Kyiv, according to Ukrainian emergency services.
“A residential building, nine cars, a tram and a tram line were damaged” in this area, they said on Telegram.
The Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have shot down 63 of 111 drones fired by Russia. According to her, 46 others were neutralized by jammers or disappeared from radars without “adverse consequences”, and two others returned to Russia and Belarus.
A man was also killed and two women injured by Russian artillery fire in the southern region of Kherson, according to the regional prosecutor’s office. This region is partially occupied by Russia, with the Dnieper River which crosses it acting as a front line.
In his old wishes, Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Ukraine will have, for the year 2025, to fight “on the battlefield”, but above all at the “negotiating table” for peace.
Vladimir Putin only made a vague allusion to the war in Ukraine in his wishes. In December he promised more “destruction” to Ukraine after an attack in Kyiv that hit a building in Kazan, in central Russia, about 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
