Russia launched a New Year’s Day drone attack on Ukraine’s capital early Wednesday, killing at least two people, injuring at least six others, and damaging buildings in two districts, authorities said.
Two floors of a residential building in central Kyiv were partially destroyed in the strike, according to the State Emergency Service. Two people were killed, it said.
The National Bank of Ukraine also said in a statement that one of its buildings nearby had been damaged by debris from a downed drone.
“Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only concerned about how to hurt Ukraine,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media about the strike.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down 63 out of 111 drones launched by Russia overnight across various regions of Ukraine. An additional 46 were downed by electronic jamming, it said.
The intercepts took place in the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Khmelnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Poltava, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia and Zhytomyr regions, the military said.
In Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak said Russia attacked with artillery, rockets and drones, damaging seven houses and a medical center.
Russia’s defense ministry said Wednesday it destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the Kursk region.
In neighboring Bryansk, the regional governor said Russian air defenses destroyed two drones, and that there were no casualties or damage.
Also on Wednesday, Ukraine said that the transit of Russian natural gas through its territory had been halted as of 7 a.m. local time, citing “national security.”
“We stopped the transit of Russian gas. This is a historic event,” Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko said in a statement.
In a New Year's Eve address to his nation Tuesday, Zelenskyy said his country would do everything it could in the new year to end the war with Russia.
"And every day in the coming year, I, and all of us, must fight for a Ukraine that is strong enough. Because only such a Ukraine is respected and heard, both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table," Zelenskyy said.
"May 2025 be our year. The year of Ukraine. We know that peace will not be given to us as a gift, but we will do everything to stop Russia and end the war. This is what each of us wishes for," he added.
In 2024, Ukraine lost seven times more ground to Russia than it did in 2023: about 4,000 square kilometers, mostly in the east, according to data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. At the same time, Ukraine took several hundred square kilometers of Russian territory in Kursk. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Some information for this story was provided by Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
