Key events
The UK’s Ministry of Defence has sent a New Year’s Eve message of support to Ukraine, accompanied by a rendition of the song, Lean on Me.
In a post on X, it said:
Wishing a Happy New Year to our friends in @Defenceu.
Our support for your fight for freedom will remain unwavering in 2024.
Diane Taylor
Not all blended families get through the festive period in perfect harmony. But a number of extended units whose members did not even know each other two years ago say they are looking forward to bringing in the new year together.
These blended families are composed of Ukrainians who escaped the war in their home country and Britons who have given them shelter in their homes. While not all the relationships between Ukrainian refugees and their British host families have endured, the scheme has had many successful pairings where those from both countries say they have forged friendships for life and where two families have become one.
…For Liliia Konopelska, a Ukrainian who was working in the UK when the war broke out, it was an epic struggle to bring her two children, Marta, now 14, and Orest, now 12, to safety in the UK. Konopelska had been working in the UK before the war started and her visa subsequently expired, complicating her efforts to bring her children to Britain as part of the Homes For Ukraine scheme.
She had got to know her hosts Yana Valletta and Stefano Rosati and their young daughter, Lily, when she briefly worked with them. The family, who live in west London, immediately offered to help Konopelska when they learned of the difficulties she was having bringing her children to the UK.
“We have chosen each other,” said Valletta. “I consider Liliia to be my friend. As a mother, it’s hard to see another mother separated from her children because of war.”
You can read the full report here.
Footage of the shelled Kharkiv Palace hotel has been posted by Belarusian media outlet, Nexta.
The Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko has said Russia is “targeting and hitting civilian buildings”, following the fresh bombardment on Ukrainian regions.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, she said colleagues had told her that:
There has been destruction of so many civilian buildings, the administration, the hotels, just the debris fron the drones and the missiles which were hitting just residential areas.
Now Russia is launching these missiles – it’s the C-300s along with the drones – not even covering up that they’re trying to hit energy infrastructure, which essentially is civilian infrastructure, but actually targeting and hitting civilian buildings.
She added Ukraine needed “guarantees” regarding the delivery of military aid packages for Ukraine.
The weapons are coming, there’s ammunition, but we need to have guarantees that these deliveries and this military assistance will be coming for as long as it takes.
New Years night is likely to be loud across #Ukraine. The previous two were. Just yesterday 6 C-300 missiles launched by #russia to kill Ukrainians
— Lesia Vasylenko (@lesiavasylenko) December 31, 2023
Here are some images coming to us over the wires.
Kharkiv. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP/Getty Images
Russia’s defence ministry said it hit “decision-making centres” and military facilities in Kharkiv in response to the shelling of Belgorod, the state-run RIA news agency reports.
Ukrainian officials have given more details on Russia’s attacks overnight.
At least six missiles hit Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Sunday, injuring at least 28 people and hitting residential buildings, hotels and medical facilities.
Earlier, Ukrainian officials said that two boys aged 14 and 16 and a security adviser for a team of German journalists were among those injured in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Reuters reported.
Closer to midnight, as part of a wider bombardment of Ukraine that also targeted Kyiv, several waves of Russian drones hit residential buildings in Kharkiv’s centre, causing fires, the city’s mayor said.
Mayor Ihor Terekhov said:
On the eve of the New Year, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared – we are unbreakable and invincible!
Death toll from Ukrainian rocket attack on Belgorod rises to 24 – Russian official
The death toll from a Ukrainian rocket attack on the Russian city of Belgorod just north of Ukraine rose to 24 on Sunday, the governor of the Belgorod region said.
In a posting on Telegram, Vyacheslav Gladkov said there were also 108 wounded after Saturday’s attack, which he said had damaged 37 apartment buildings among other locations.
There was no official comment from Kyiv in the hours after the attack, Reuters reported.
The Guardian was not able to independently verify the Russian reports.
Ukraine’s military destroyed 21 out of 49 attack drones launched by Russia in its latest overnight air strike, Kyiv’s air force said on Sunday.
Most drones were aimed at Ukraine’s first line of defence as well as at civilian, military and infrastructure in the Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, it added.
Russia has sentenced more than 200 Ukrainian fighters to prison terms – Lavrov
Russian courts have sentenced more than 200 Ukrainian fighters to “long” prison terms since the beginning of the conflict, Moscow’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in an interview with the state-run RIA news agency reported.
Lavrov said:
The courts of the Russian Federation have already sentenced more than 200 representatives of Ukrainian armed formations to long terms of imprisonment for committing atrocities.
Lavrov added that Russia’s main investigative organ, the Investigative Committee, has initiated 4,000 criminal cases against about 900 Ukrainian individuals, Reuters reported.
Lavrov added:
They include not only members of radical nationalist associations, representatives of Ukrainian security forces and mercenaries, but also representatives of the military and political leadership of Ukraine.
Those of them who were charged in absentia have been put on the international wanted list.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, called residents of the city of Belgorod to hide in shelters on Sunday as a missile threat alert was issued in the city, according to a post on his Telegram account.
More than 20 people were killed in Belgorod on Saturday in what Moscow said was an “indiscriminate” Ukrainian air attack on the city Reuters reported.
Good morning, this is the starting point for the Guardian’s daily live coverage of the Russian war against Ukraine. Here is a summary of the most recent developments:
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Russia launched a bombardment on Ukrainian regions in the hours leading into New Year’s Eve, targeting Kyiv and inflicting damage on residential areas of the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian officials said. Ukraine’s air defence systems in the region surrounding Kyiv were engaging Russian drones, the military administration of the region said on Telegram.
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The Kharkiv mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said the drone attack came in several waves, hitting residential buildings in the city centre and starting fires. “All relevant emergency services are already on the site. Information about potential casualties is being clarified.”
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Ukraine carried out a series of strikes on the Russian border city of Belgorod, the day after an 18-hour aerial barrage across Ukraine killed at least 41 civilians. Russian officials said the shelling in the centre of Belgorod on Saturday killed 21 people, including three children, and injured 110 more. Ukrainian media – citing law enforcement agencies – said the attacks only hit military targets and were retaliation for Friday’s mass bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
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A Ukrainian security source, though, told the BBC that casualties in Belgorod were the result of “incompetent work of Russian air defence”, suggesting debris from failed Russian interceptors fell on the city. The Guardian could not independently verify the claim. Online observers posted videos purporting to show Russian air defence missiles falling back on to Belgorod.
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The Guardian could not independently confirm the death toll. If the numbers were correct, the strike would be one of the deadliest on Russia during the war so far.
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The Belgorod attack came a day after Ukraine said a barrage of Russian missile strikes on several cities killed at least 40 people, wounding dozens more.
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Russia experienced a sharp rise in the number of killed and wounded troops in 2023, due to “degradation” of military quality, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
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In its daily intelligence briefing, the MoD said the average daily number of Russian casualties (killed and wounded) had risen by almost 300 a day compared with 2022. “The increase in daily averages, as reported by the Ukrainian authorities, almost certainly reflects the degradation of Russia’s forces and its transition to a lower quality, high quantity mass army since the ‘partial mobilisation’ of reservists in September 2022.”
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Moscow would not give an explanation for a missile in Polish airspace unless provided with “hard evidence” it was Russian, said Andrei Ordash, Russia’s chargé d’affaires in Poland, after being summoned to the Polish foreign ministry. Poland’s armed forces said an unknown airborne object, which they identified as a Russian missile, entered Polish airspace from the direction of Ukraine for less than three minutes. “Until hard evidence is provided, we will not give any explanations, because these accusations are unfounded,” Ordash said.
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