WAR IN UKRAINE: January 1, 2023

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 312

  • Ukrainians rang in the New Year in mostly low-key formats as they entered the 312th day of the war. Air raid sirens blared out across Lviv and many other oblasts about an hour after the midnight bell. Drones were shot down in Kyiv and elsewhere in the early hours of Jan. 1. In Lviv early New Year’s Eve, families and couples could be seen strolling along the major pedestrian boulevard leading to the famed Opera House.

  • Russia launched a fresh barrage of missiles across Ukraine on Dec. 31, killing at least one person and wounding at least 28, on New Year’s Eve Day. In a devastating strike on the four-star, 229-room Alfavito Hotel in central Kyiv, a journalist from Japan’s Asahi Shimbun is among the wounded. The blasts also caused significant damage to the nearby, cherished cultural institution, Palace Ukraine. For quite some time early New Years Day afternoon, all oblasts of Ukraine were under air raid alerts.

  • In the western city of Khmelnytskyi, a drone attack injured two people, a Ukrainian official said. Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv were also targeted. A 22-year-old girl, who was wounded in Khmelnytskyi from the shelling died, the head of the regional military administration said on Jan. 1

  • Russian strike leaves 1,750 homes without power in Zaporizhzhia following New Year's Eve attack. Russia launched a fresh barrage of missiles across Ukraine on Dec. 31, killing at least one person and wounding over 30, on New Year’s Eve. At least two people were injured in Zaporizhzhia - Kyiv Independent

  • Zelensky: World will never forgive ‘Russian terror.’  “A terrorist state will not receive forgiveness, and those who give orders for such strikes, who carry it out, will not receive forgiveness – to put it mildly,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address.

  • Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has claimed Russia, bogged down in Ukraine after invading its neighbor more than 10 months ago, will soon announce a further mobilization, and urged Russians to avoid it - RFE/RL

  • A backup power line to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant has been disconnected due to damage caused by shelling, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement on December 30.

  • Since Ukraine declared martial law and implemented a general mobilization in response to Russia's invasion, more than 12,000 men have tried to leave Ukraine illegally, and 15 of them have died, the State Border Service reported.

Michael BociurkiwComment