Four people were killed and 13 injured, including journalists, in a Ukrainian strike over the New Year on the Moscow-controlled town of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, a state-appointed official said Monday. Russia. According to Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk “republic”, Ukrainian forces targeted the center of this pro-Russian stronghold using cluster munitions.
“The enemy aimed to do as much harm as possible to the civilian population,” Denis Pushilin said on Telegram, asserting that these strikes made “no military sense”. According to the rescue services cited by the Russian news agency TASS, a journalist was among those killed and another among the injured. Donetsk, a large city in eastern Ukraine, came under the control of pro-Russian separatists led by Moscow in 2014 and has since been regularly bombarded by the Ukrainian army.
A “record” Russian attack on New Year’s Eve, according to kyiv
The Ukrainian strikes also damaged a school, apartment buildings, a store, a business center and other buildings, the Russian Investigative Committee said on Telegram. Ukraine, for its part, claimed to have faced a “record” attack by 90 Russian drones on New Year’s Eve that targeted several cities including Odessa (south) and Lviv (west), which left at least one dead.
Moscow and kyiv have seen an escalation of violence in recent days with an unprecedented attack which left 24 dead on Saturday in Belgorod, Russia, following a missile attack against Ukraine on Friday, described as “massive” by Kiev, and which caused around forty deaths. President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Moscow would “intensify” its strikes on military targets in retaliation for Ukraine’s bombing of Belgorod.