Ukraine’s president says Russia is planning a long campaign of drone strikes to demoralize Ukraine.
Vladimir Zelensky said he had received intelligence reports indicating that Moscow would launch attacks using Iranian-made Shahid drones.
It comes after an attack by Ukraine that said hundreds of Russian soldiers had been killed in the Donbass region.
In a rare acknowledgment of battlefield casualties, Russia said 63 of its soldiers were killed in the attack.
In his overnight address from Kyiv, Mr Zelensky said Russia planned to “destroy” Ukraine with a long wave of drone strikes.
“We must ensure – and we will do everything to ensure – that this terrorist objective fails like all the others,” he said. “Now is the time that everyone involved in protecting the sky should pay special attention.”
Russian drone attacks on Ukraine have increased in recent days, with Moscow launching attacks on cities and power stations across the country over the past three nights.
Correspondents say the pressure on Ukraine’s military — which is supposed to track and intercept the drones — is having an extraordinary effect on the civilian population, which has been left with uncertainty, fear and disruption by the attacks across the country. Living with
Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for months, destroying power plants and plunging millions into darkness during the country’s freezing winter.
Ukraine’s air defenses have already shot down 80 Iranian-made drones in the early days of 2023, Mr. Zelinsky said.
Elsewhere, Ukraine has confirmed it launched an attack in the occupied Donetsk region, which it previously claimed killed 400 Russian soldiers.
Russian officials contested the figures, saying only 63 soldiers were killed. Any claim is not verified and access to the site is restricted.
On New Year’s Day, Ukraine attacked a building in the city of Makivka, where Russian forces were stationed.
It is extremely rare for Moscow to confirm battlefield casualties.
But it was such a deadly attack, that keeping quiet may not have been an option.
It is the highest number of casualties Moscow has acknowledged in a single incident since the war began 10 months ago.
In a statement on Monday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian forces fired six rockets using the US-made Hammars rocket system at the residence of Russian soldiers. Two of them were shot dead, he added.
Pro-Russian commentator Igor Gerkin had previously said that hundreds had been killed and wounded, although the exact number was unknown due to the large number missing.
The building itself was “almost completely destroyed,” he said.
He added that the victims were mainly active soldiers – that is, recent recruits rather than those who chose to fight. He also said that the ammunition was kept in the same building where the soldiers were, adding to the damage.
“Almost all military equipment was also destroyed, which was standing right next to the building, without any camouflage,” he wrote on Telegram.
Gerkin is a popular military blogger, who led Russian-backed separatists when they seized large parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014. He was recently found guilty of murder for his role in the downing of flight MH17.
Despite his partisan stance, he regularly criticizes the Russian military leadership and its tactics.
Several Russian lawmakers have also sharply criticized military commanders over the attack, saying the commanders should be held accountable for allowing troops to concentrate in an unsecured building within Ukraine’s rocket range, where munitions could be deployed. may also have been stored.
Sergei Mironov, a former chairman of the Russian Senate, said it was obvious that neither the intelligence nor the air defense functioned properly.
According to an earlier statement by the Ukrainian military, 300 were injured, out of an estimate of 400 dead. The Ukrainian military claims that dozens, sometimes hundreds, of soldiers are killed in attacks almost daily.
A later statement from the General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said that “up to 10 units of enemy military equipment” were “destroyed and damaged” in the strikes and that “casualties of occupation personnel are being explained”.
Ukraine has not confirmed that the strikes were carried out by Hummarus missiles, maintaining a long-standing policy of not releasing specific details about its strikes.
