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.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
The Trump administration has finalized a sweeping reciprocal trade agreement with Taiwan, confirming a 15 percent U.S. tariff rate on Taiwanese imports while securing broad new market access and purchase commitments for American goods.
Democrats are applauding White House border czar Tom Homan’s Thursday announcement that immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota will end next week.
Democrats in the U.S. Senate tanked the Homeland Security full-year funding bill in a last-ditch vote Thursday, all but guaranteeing a partial government shutdown starting Saturday.
Mourners in a remote Canadian town grappled Thursday with the aftermath of one of the country’s deadliest school shootings in decades, as families, survivors and leaders reacted to the tragedy that left eight victims — most of them children — dead, along with the 18-year-old suspect.
A gunman who opened fire at a school in southern Thailand’s Hat Yai city on Wednesday wounded a teacher and a student before being detained, authorities said, in a rare attack that sent students and staff into panic.
The Republican-led House of Representatives has passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, advancing legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo identification at the polls. The bill now heads to the Senate, where its future remains uncertain amid strong Democratic opposition.
Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that its advanced David’s Sling air and missile defense system has completed a series of complex modernized tests, a development officials say bolsters the country’s defensive posture as tensions with Iran escalate and the United States prepares military options that could include direct strikes.