UKRAINE repelled a drone attack on Sunday (Dec 31) night, shooting down 87 of 90 Russian unmanned aerial vehicles, the Ukrainian air defense unit said on its Telegram channel. 

The strike, targeting regions from southern Odesa on the Black Sea to central Kyiv and western Lviv near the Polish border, came days after Russia’s heaviest missile bombardment over the weekend that killed at least 30 people in Ukraine. Moscow intensified its attacks last week as retaliation for Ukraine’s destruction of the Russian landing ship Novocherkassk in Feodosia, Crimea, earlier in the week.

Russia’s strike damaged mostly residential and municipal areas, including parts of a university and a museum, compared with mainly energy targets a year ago. The number of drones shot down on Sunday overnight was almost twice as many as those in a similar attack on Jan 1, 2023, Ukraine’s air defence commander, Mykola Oleshchuk, said on Telegram. 

Hostilities escalated last week as a war conceived by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as a “special military operation” that would topple Ukraine’s government within days or weeks approaches the two-year mark.

Separately on Sunday night, “four S-300 missiles as well as X-31 and X-59 shells hit north-eastern Kharkiv and southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions”, the air defence unit said on Telegram. Local authorities said at least two people were killed in Odesa and Kherson and a dozen others including children were injured, while electricity supply was cut in several settlements.

Russia said eastern Donetsk, which it occupies, was heavily shelled on Sunday night too. At least four people were killed and 13 wounded, Kremlin-installed head of Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, said on Telegram.

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Ukraine has been urging its Western allies to continue providing support as more than US$110 billion in total aid from the European Union and the US is held up by political disagreements. The UK last week said it’s shipping about 200 missiles to bolster the country’s air defenses in the wake of Russia’s bombardment.

Since Putin’s invasion, Ukraine has intercepted 1,709 Russian missiles and 3,095 shahed drones, almost 85 per cent of those launched over the country, according to Oleshchuk. 

Ukraine expects to “receive Western aircraft, more aerial bombs and missiles of American, British and French production” this year, Oleshchuk said. “We are also waiting for new defense systems, capable to intercept ballistic shells.” BLOOMBERG