«On the night of January 8, 2024, the enemy launched a massive attack on Ukraine, using cruise, aviation, ballistic, anti-aircraft guided missiles and attack UAVs», – Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi reported.
Critical, civil infrastructure, industrial and military facilities were attacked. This time the enemy attacked different regions of Ukraine. In particular, directed ballistic missiles targeted Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Khmelnytskyi regions. A total of 59 means of enemy air attacks were recorded.
As a result, Ukrainian Air Defence destroyed: 8 “Shahed-136/131” attack UAVs and 18 Kh-101/Kh-555/Kh-55 cruise missiles.
Four people died, and 38 were injured – the National Police documents the consequences of another missile attack on Ukraine by the Russian army.
In Dnipropetrovsk region, as a result of missile attacks on Kryvyi Rih, Novomoskovsk, and the village of Nadiya, Kryvyi Rih region, one person died and 28 were injured, including four children. Private houses and civil infrastructure were damaged.
As a result of the Russian attack on Kharkiv and Zmiiv, one person died, five civilians were injured, two private houses and a regional vocational education center were damaged.
In Khmelnytskyi, two people were killed and an apartment building was damaged due to a Russian missile attack.
Five people were injured in Zaporizhzhia. In addition, two apartment buildings, a car and civil infrastructure were damaged.
World media and their reaction to the Russian attack
The New York Times reported Russian missiles pound several Ukrainian regions. The attack — which killed at least two people, wounded many others and caused heavy damage — came as Moscow has intensified air assaults in recent days.
Although the targets of the attack and scale of the damage were not immediately clear, the air assault on January 8, 2024, came as Russia has stepped up its airstrikes against Ukraine in recent days, in what appears to be a strategy to destroy critical industrial and military infrastructure, and wear down Ukrainian morale.
Unlike previous attacks, the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, was not targeted on Monday. That might be because the city is well protected by powerful air defense systems, including American-designed Patriot batteries, which are able to shoot down most incoming missiles.
«South China Morning Post», is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group, did not write anything at all about the Russian shelling of Ukraine. In recent articles concerning the world in general, SCMP describes the events taking place in Israel, and also pays attention to Blinken’s statement about the war in the Middle East.
The People’s Daily, is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, does not describe Russian shelling too, while directing attention to India.
Qatar state-owned media Al Jazeera describes the shelling that took place yesterday in its list of key events about Ukraine, while not separately describing today’s mass shelling.
Against the background of the events in Ukraine, Al Jazeera is releasing an article this morning: “Putin is starting 2024 from a position of strength. The political, military and economic collapse of Russia many in the West had hoped for never materialized.”
Over the New Year, Russia launched massive missile and drone attacks, trying to exhaust the Ukrainian air defense and hoping that in the absence of funding, it would eventually run out of expensive missiles for anti-aircraft systems. If it succeeds, it will proceed to methodically destroy Ukrainian military infrastructure by bomber planes, precipitating Ukraine’s military collapse faster than many would have imagined.
Conclusion
Ukraine’s lack of a sufficient number of air defense systems means that it does not allow to entirely protect the country’s airspace, in particular over Kryvyi Rih and Kharkiv, which were fired at by Russia with missiles on Monday morning. Severe frosts are coming to Ukraine, so it is quite clear that Russia has chosen the tactics of shelling critical infrastructure, as it did last year. Compared to past shillings, Chinese and Middle Eastern media did not describe Russian terror in Ukraine, increasingly shifting attention to other countries.
