Ukraine said on Monday that it faced a “record” attack of 90 drones fired by Russia on New Year’s Eve which notably targeted Lviv and Odessa, killing at least one person.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, 87 of 90 Shahed explosive drones launched by Russian forces from four directions were destroyed in flight. “The enemy used a record number of attack drones,” she noted.
It also reported strikes using four S-300 surface-to-air missiles in the Kharkiv region (north-east) and three Kh-31 and one Kh-59 anti-radar missiles targeting the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions. (south).
Two people killed
In the Lviv region, in the west of the country, the strikes destroyed a university and a museum whose history is linked to two Ukrainian nationalist figures and Nazi collaborators during the Second World War, according to Mayor Andriï Sadovy.
In the Odessa region (south), one person was killed and eight injured during this nighttime attack, according to local authorities. In Khmelnytsky, a child was injured.
A woman was also killed during Russian shelling in the Kherson region on Monday, head of the regional administration Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram.
Escalation of violence
Russia, for its part, reported Ukrainian bombings and drone strikes on the Belgorod border region, which did not cause any casualties.
Moscow and kyiv have seen an escalation of violence in recent days with an unprecedented attack which left 24 dead on Saturday in Belgorod, Russia, following a missile attack against Ukraine on Friday, described as “massive” by Kiev, and which caused around forty deaths.