The Russian military continued to launch attacks on mostly civilian targets in Ukraine over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military reported in its daily update on January 3, a day after the Russian military acknowledged large losses in one of Kyiv’s most deadliest strikes since the start of the conflict 10 months ago.
Local residents carry their belongings as they leave their home in Zaporizhzhya, which was destroyed in a Russian rocket attack.
It said the Russian military had launched six missile and 52 air strikes as well as 77 attacks from rocket launcher systems. All six missile strikes and 30 of the air strikes targeted civilian infrastructure, the General Staff of the Ukraine Armed Forces said.
Ukrainian forces also shot down 27 Iranian Shahed drones launched by Russian forces, the general staff added.
Elsewhere, the Russian military launched a rocket attack on the ice hockey arena in Druzhkivka, in the Donetsk region. The hockey club, Donbas, former champions of Ukraine’s top ice hockey league, had played there.
Video uploaded to social media showed what appeared to be the Altair Arena in flames.
Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko wrote on Telegram that two people had been wounded in the Russian missile strike on Druzhkivka. He also added that a Russian rocket had also hit the nearby village of Yakovlivka.
Russia appears to have stepped up its air strikes against civilian targets in the capital, Kyiv, and other cities in recent days.
Russia is planning a protracted campaign of attacks with Iranian drones to “exhaust” Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on January 2.
“We have information that Russia is planning a protracted attack using Shahed drones,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. “It is probably banking on exhaustion. Exhausting our people, our anti-aircraft defenses, our energy.”
