Damage in Ukraine from a Russian missile and drone attack, December 31, 2022 (Getty)

Sunday’s Coverage: Russia’s Failed New Year Attacks

Source: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 1324 GMT:

The Ukrainian military command says up to 400 Russian soldiers were killed in the shelling of a barracks in occupied Makiivka in the Donestk region in eastern Ukraine.

Without acknowledging that there were troops in the building, a converted vocational school, a senior Russian proxy official said “there were dead and wounded, the exact number is still unknown” from a “massive blow” on New Year’s Day (see 0748 GMT).

However, the Russian Defense Ministry has now reportedly confirmed the deaths of at least 63 troops, saying six US-supplied HIMARS rockets were fired and four struck the building.

UPDATE 0911 GMT:

The governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, Alexander Bogomaz, says a Ukrianian drone damaged a power facility on Monday morning.

Bogomaz said electricity was cut to one settlement but there were no casualties.

UPDATE 0800 GMT:

The Ukrainian military says air defenses downed all 39 Iranian-made drones, as well as two Russian-made Orlan-10 drones and an X-59 guided missile, fired by Russia across Ukraine early Monday.

UPDATE 0748 GMT:

Ukrainian forces have reportedly inflicted mass casualties on the Russian military in a New Year’s Day attack.

Ukrainian shelling destroyed a building used as a barracks in occupied Makiivka in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.

Russian proxy officials did not admit military losses. They said instead that at least 15 people were injured in Makiivka, a center of the coal industry, by at least 25 rockets.

But Daniil Bezsonov, a senior proxy official, said a vocational school suffered a “massive blow”: “There were dead and wounded, the exact number is still unknown.”

Local sources said the school had been converted into a barracks, and one pro-Russian blogger posted that there were “hundreds” of killed and wounded troops.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Russia has launched its fourth wave of aerial attacks in five days on Ukraine, flying Iranian-made attack UAVs towards Kyiv and the surrounding region.

Air raid sirens started in Kyiv and across eastern Ukraine just after midnight on Monday and sounded until about 3:45 a.m.

The Kyiv military administration reported that 22 “aerial targets” were shot down above the capital. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said a 19-year-old man was hospitalized after he was hit by debris from a downed drone in northeast Kyiv.

Klitschko reported damage to one infrastructure facility, causing power and heating outages. Water supply is unaffected.

Presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko posted a photo and wrote, “Falling of UAV wreckage on the roadway. The windows in the house next door were damaged.”

Russia’s Failing Attacks

Russia’s waves of missiles and drone attacks, targeting energy infrastructure and other civilian sites, began on October 10. In the largest wave, more than 106 missiles were fired from the air and from warships in the Black and Caspian Seas. They were accompanied by dozens of the Iranian “kamikaze” drones, suppled to Moscow this summer.

At one point, half of Ukraine’s electricity grid was knocked out. However, the effects of the attacks are diminishing, because of Ukrainian air defenses and Russia exhausting its stock of missiles.

Last Thursday, a Russian assault with 69 missiles and 23 drones caused limited damage to energy infrastructure, with repairs carried out by the end of the day. An attack on Saturday with dozens of missiles and drones inflicted no serious damage, and all 45 drones fired on Sunday were downed.