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Ukrainian soldiers in the Kharkiv region
Photo: Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP
That says Kyiv
In view of the repeated Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warns of a possible war of attrition.
"We have information that Russia is planning a long-term use of Shahed drones," said Zelenskyy in his daily video address on Monday evening.
Russia wants to achieve wear and tear with it.
"The exhaustion of our people, our air defenses, our energy," he said.
"But we must and will do everything we can to ensure that this goal of the terrorists fails like all the others."
The Russian military uses so-called kamikaze drones, which at the end of their flight fall vertically on their target.
The relatively slow Iranian-made drones are an easy target for anti-aircraft defenses, but the large numbers of deployed unmanned aerial vehicles and constant air surveillance pose a challenge for Ukrainian air defenses.
Then there is the cost factor – a drone made from cheap parts has to be shot down with expensive weapon systems.
"Only two days have passed since the beginning of the year," said Zelenskyy.
"And already the number of drones shot down over Ukraine is over 80." The Russian military mainly use the drones against Ukrainian cities in order to cause as much damage as possible to the energy network there.
According to the responsible ice hockey club, an ice rink in the eastern Ukrainian city of Druzhkivka is said to have been destroyed in the rocket fire.
Previously there had been reports that two people had been injured in a rocket impact.
Moscow says so
After days of Russian kamikaze drones approaching Ukrainian cities, the anti-aircraft defense of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula attacked Ukrainian drones on Monday evening.
According to a report by the state agency TASS, two Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down over the Sevastopol naval port.
"Our air defense continued to repel the attacks," Moscow-appointed governor Mikhail Rasvozhayev was quoted as saying.
Sevastopol is the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
The port has been the target of Ukrainian drone attacks on several occasions, most recently on December 30.
In October, the Ukrainian military used drone boats loaded with explosives against the Russian fleet near Sevastopol.
There are conflicting statements from both sides about their effect.
humanitarian situation
Since the liberation of the area around the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv from Russian occupation, the police say they have discovered 25 torture camps there.
In the camps, among other things, Russian troops held and tortured civilians under inhumane conditions, said regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko on Facebook on Monday.
Some of the prisoners were given electric shocks, others had their fingers broken.
The area around Kharkiv had been occupied by Russian troops for months.
They only withdrew in early September after a Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Since then, 920 bodies of civilians, including 25 children, have been discovered in the liberated region, Tymoschko said.
They were killed by Russian soldiers.
According to investigations by the Ukrainian authorities so far, Russian armed forces have also committed war crimes in other occupied territories.
After the withdrawal of Russian units from the Kiev suburb of Bucha, the bodies of more than 400 people were discovered there.
Most of them had died violent deaths.
The investigations are ongoing.
International reactions
According to an expert, the Russian attacks with so-called kamikaze drones on targets in Ukraine are deliberately carried out at night and along the Dnipro River.
"Logically, not everything is visible in the sky at night," Colonel Vladislav Zelesnyov told the Ukrainian agency RBK-Ukraina on Monday.
The flight route from the south along the Dnipro was also chosen in order to avoid the Ukrainian air defenses if possible.
Russian forces have recently launched waves of kamikaze drones, which plummet vertically toward their targets, against Ukraine's cities for several nights in a row.
Most of the Iranian-made drones were shot down by anti-aircraft defenses.
Nevertheless, falling debris caused considerable damage.
economic consequences
French vegetable canner Bonduelle has denied reports that it supplies the Russian army.
Photos on the Russian online network VKontakte showing soldiers with canned Bonduelle and a greeting card with New Year's wishes for a "quick victory" in Ukraine are fake, the company told the AFP news agency on Monday.
"We don't distribute packages to soldiers."
The group, on the other hand, confirmed their participation in the "Baskets of Benevolence" campaign.
The campaign, organized by the Russian food bank, aims to collect products for the needy and "is not affiliated with the army," said a spokeswoman for Bonduelle.
After the photos, which Bonduelle said were fake, appeared on the Internet, there was a wave of calls for a boycott of the French company.
A post by the city of Jarzewo on VKontakte, which has since been deleted, said Bonduelle had sent 10,000 packages to Russian soldiers.
Bonduelle is one of the few French companies to have continued operations in Russia after the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
"The Bonduelle Group continues its activities in Russia with the sole purpose of ensuring access to food for the population of Russia and neighboring countries," the company stressed.
bbr/jok/dpa/Reuters
