UkraineRussiaWar

Ukraine was preparing for an unhappy New Year on Sunday after coming under massive Russian air strikes that killed scores of people. The attacks come as the president of Ukraine struggles to maintain the gigantic Western support needed to stand up against Russia’s military, which invaded his country in February 2022.

Ukraine says it has killed five high-ranking Russian officials in an area that Russia’s military has partly occupied. The strike comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered its 22nd month, and the NATO military alliance is holding talks on the challenges ahead.

Ukraine’s capital city was struggling Saturday with “Russia’s largest drone attack” in the war so far, injuring several, the Ukrainian Air Force and other sources said. 

More video evidence emerged this weekend of Russia readying for peace talks with Ukraine as hundreds of thousands were killed and injured since Moscow invaded the country in February last year.

Ukraine has been on top of the agenda alongside the Israel-Gaza war at the summit of European Union ministers in Brussels, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warned of a brutal winter with more Russian attacks expected against his country’s infrastructure. However, Germany already pledged that its support for the war-torn nation would be “massively expanded” next year.

Moscow on Monday pulled out of a grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea after two people died in a blast hitting a bridge linking Crimea with Russia.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged that his country’s long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia has begun. The comments come after an escalation of fighting in the south and east of Ukraine and Moscow expressing doubts about Kyiv’s progress of the widely anticipated push.

Kyiv pleaded for international help on Wednesday as tens of thousands of people were at risk of drowning following the collapse of a gigantic dam in a Russian-occupied region of southern Ukraine.

Ukraine has accused Russia of blowing up a massive dam on the Dnipro River, forcing thousands of people to flee catastrophic flooding. Moscow denies responsibility for the disaster in the Russian-occupied Kherson area in southern Ukraine, but Kyiv wants the United Nations to intervene.

Moscow claimed Monday that it prevented a Ukrainian counter-offensive by killing 250 Ukrainian troops amid concerns in the West that its weapons were used against Russia.

Ukraine says a toddler has been killed and 22 injured after a Russian air strike in a residential area of the Ukrainian central city of Dnipro. But there were growing indications Sunday that the war in Ukraine was further escalating beyond its borders, with Russian authorities accusing Kyiv of attacking targets inside Russian territory.

War was brought to Russia’s capital early Tuesday as drone strikes hit Moscow, damaging several buildings and prompting evacuations, the city’s mayor and other sources said.

Explosions shook Ukraine’s capital Sunday as Russia launched dozens of drones on Kyiv, killing at least one person, officials said. Elsewhere in the wartorn nation, the death toll from Friday’s Russian missile strike on a clinic in the eastern city of Dnipro rose from two to four people ahead of an imminent Ukrainian counter-offensive.