Here is the situation as it stands on Sunday, January 1, 2023:
New Year speeches
- President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a New Year message that his only wish for all Ukrainians for 2023 was victory and resolved to stay the course while the country fights for it.
- “This year has struck our hearts. We’ve cried out all the tears. We’ve shouted all the prayers,” Zelenskyy said. “We fight and will continue to fight. For the sake of the key word: ‘victory’.”
- President Vladimir Putin devoted his New Year’s address to rallying the Russian people behind his troops fighting in Ukraine and pledging victory over Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” and a West supposedly intent on “destroying Russia”.
- Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Russia’s victory over Ukraine was “inevitable” as he hailed Russian soldiers’ heroism in a New Year’s video message.
Fighting
- Numerous blasts were heard in Kyiv and other places around Ukraine and air raid sirens wailed across the country in the early hours of New Year’s Day. There were no immediate reports of damage.
- A barrage of more than 20 cruise missiles was fired at targets across Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least one person and injuring 20 in the capital city in the second wave of attacks on the country in three days.
- A hotel just south of Kyiv’s city centre was hit, and a residential building in another district was damaged, according to the city administration.
- Other regions across Ukraine also came under fire, including the southern region of Mykolaiv, the western city of Khmelnytskyi and the southern industrial powerhouse city of Zaporizhzhia.
- Russia and Ukraine said they had freed more than 200 captured soldiers, the latest prisoner exchange between the two sides.
- Russian authorities announced that soldiers and state employees deployed to fight in Ukraine will be exempt from income tax, Moscow’s latest effort to encourage support for a military campaign against Kyiv.
Diplomacy
- France will stand by Ukraine until its victory, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a New Year’s Eve speech. “In the year that is starting, we will stand by you without fail,” he said.
- Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva met separately on Saturday with representatives of Russia and Ukraine before his inauguration and called for an end to the war between the two countries.
