Ukraine ‘has become stronger’, says Zelenskiy, as Russia pummels city of Kharkiv with missiles

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy honoured his people’s resilience in times of bloodshed in a long and lyrical new year’s speech.

“The major result of the year, its main achievement: Ukraine has become stronger,” Mr Zelenskiy said in a televised address interspersed with footage of cities under attack and meetings with leaders of Ukraine’s western allies.

Mentioning “war” 14 times in his 20-minute message, Mr Zelenskiy also vowed, just like a year ago, that a free Ukraine would prevail.

“No matter how many rockets the enemy launches, no matter how many shellings and attacks – vile, merciless, massive – the enemy carries out in an attempt to break Ukrainians, intimidate, knock Ukraine down, drive it underground, we will still rise,” he said, dressed in his trademark khaki outfit.

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Russia pummelled the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with missiles and drones in the hours leading up to New Year’s Eve, in a brutal assault that contrasted sharply with the sense of normality that President Vladimir Putin of Russia tried to project in his new year’s address.

Mr Putin’s address skipped any mention of the daily violence of the war, ignoring recent tit-for-tat assaults that included the strikes on Kharkiv, as well as a Ukrainian attack on the Russian city of Belgorod that left 24 people dead, Russian officials said.

That attack appeared to be the deadliest single strike on Russian soil since Mr Putin’s forces started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“I want to wish every Russian family all the best,” Mr Putin said, in a message that was only four minutes long and delivered in the typical setting for the Russian leader’s end-of-year address, with the night-time Kremlin illuminated in the background. “We are one country, one big family.”

The familiar staging evoked a return to business as usual after a striking new year’s speech a year ago, in which an angry and defiant Mr Putin spoke surrounded by Russian soldiers and attacked the West for “cynically using Ukraine.” This time, the Russian leader only briefly addressed Russian soldiers in his speech, calling them “our heroes” who are “on the front line of the battle for truth and justice.” He did not mention Ukraine or the West.

His relatively calm message appeared to reflect his military’s improved battlefield position compared with the last months of 2022, when Russia’s humiliating retreat in northeast Ukraine precipitated the Kremlin’s unpopular and chaotic military draft. Now, Mr Putin appears confident in his ability to continue waging war, bolstered by the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and by flagging support for Ukraine in the West.

Russia said it pounded Kharkiv from the skies in retaliation for what it said was a deadly Ukrainian air assault Saturday on the Russian city of Belgorod.

Residents of Kharkiv, which is just 60 miles (96km) across the border from Belgorod, were jolted by multiple air-raid sirens overnight, as several waves of ballistic missiles and attack drones rained on the city centre, injuring nearly 30 people and damaging private homes, hospitals and a hotel, according to Ukrainian officials.

“These are not military facilities, but cafes, residential buildings and offices,” Ihor Terekhov, Kharkiv’s mayor, said in a post on social media that included a video of firefighters trying to extinguish a blaze amid a pile of rubble.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the attacks on Kharkiv “struck decision-making centres and military facilities,” asserting, for instance, that the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, which a missile hit, was housing members of Ukraine’s armed forces and intelligence services. The strike left a hole the length of several stories in the hotel’s facade.

The weekend air assaults in Ukraine and Russia capped a week of intensified attacks by both sides on land, sea and air, signalling that neither country intends to de-escalate the war. In recent days, Ukraine hit a Russian warship and said it had shot down five fighter jets, while Russian forces made small advances all along the front line.

The recent flare-up in the war began Friday, when Russia pounded Ukraine with a huge and deadly air assault that breached air defences and wreaked havoc in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. It was, according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the deadliest attack on the city’s civilian population since the war started nearly two years ago.

Officials in Kyiv said overnight that rescue crews had found more bodies in the rubble, raising the death toll in Friday’s attack on the capital to 23. They have declared January 1st a day of mourning.

Overall, the attacks against Ukraine on Friday killed some 40 people, wounded about 160 others and hit critical industrial and military infrastructure, as well as civilian buildings like hospitals and schools.

In response to the bombardment, Ukraine launched the attack on Belgorod, which killed at least 24 people and wounded nearly 110 others, according to local authorities.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times