Russia Strikes Ukraine With Missiles and Drones, Killing Many (Worthy News Radio)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

MOSCOW/KYIV (Worthy News) – Seeking to inflict more death and destruction ahead of the New Year, Russia launched a massive barrage of cruise missiles and drones Friday against Ukraine, killing more than a dozen people, authorities said.

Witnesses saw that targets hit included a shopping mall, a maternity hospital, schools, and residential buildings such as apartment blocks, with at least 16 people reportedly killed and dozens injured.

The attacks were seen as a retaliation for Ukraine striking a Russian warship in the occupied Crimean port of Feodosia earlier this week.

Ukraine’s military said Russia launched a “massive” attack with 158 drones and missiles, and the air force added it “never has seen so many locations targeted simultaneously.” The military reportedly downed 114 of them.

Cities across Ukraine were attacked, including the capital, Kyiv, Lviv in the west, Odesa and Zaporizhzhia in the south, and Dnipro and Kharkiv in the east

The death toll was expected to rise as scores of people were injured, and an unknown number were buried under rubble during the roughly 18-hour onslaught, Ukrainian officials said.

As rescue workers tried to reach victims, Kyiv pleaded for help from Western allies to provide more air defenses to protect itself against aerial attacks.

WAR FATIGUE

Observers said the appeal showed signs of war fatigue in an armed conflict that had already killed hundreds of thousands of people, injured many more, and displaced millions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia “used nearly every type of weapon in its arsenal,” with “homes and a maternity hospital hit.”

“Russia again massively attacked Ukraine just as people were sleeping or going to work. This time [Russia] used almost everything it stockpiled: missiles, drones, deploying around 18 strategic bombers,” added Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Friday’s attacks came as both nations have made little progress on the frontlines in recent weeks in the nearly two-year war that began with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

However, it has become more difficult for Ukraine to obtain billions in military support from the United States and the European Union, among its main allies.

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine indirectly urged Congress to overcome political differences over that issue. “Ukraine needs funding now to continue to fight for freedom,” U.S. Ambassador Bridget Brink said in a social media post on Friday, following the massive wave of Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities.

POLITICAL INFIGHTING

The U.S. Congress has been unable to pass a $61 billion funding package for Ukraine amid months of political infighting. That lack of funding has led to uncertainty over Ukraine’s ability to finance its defense in 2024, officials say.

Additionally, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán vetoed another $54 billion European Union aid package for Ukraine this month, dealing another blow to embattled President Zelenskyy.

With Ukraine’s government becoming desperate to defend their nation, the United Nations humanitarian envoy for Ukraine condemned Russia’s “heinous wave of attacks on populated areas” early Friday. The U.N. official, Denise Brown, said Friday’s attacks “left a path of destruction, death, and human suffering” and are “another unacceptable example of the horrifying reality” Ukrainian people face.

Noting that Russia damaged “homes, schools, hospitals, a shopping center, a metro station and energy infrastructure,” she added the strikes killed and injured civilians in “almost every region of the country”

“Right now, families and emergency services are trying to pull people out of the debris left by the destructionm” Brown observed.

“For the Ukrainian people, this is another unacceptable example of the horrifying reality they are faced with, and which made 2023 another year of enormous suffering,” she said in published remarks.

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