Russia-Ukraine Accuse Each Other Of Attacks At The Beginning Of The New Year

Russia's attack on the Memorial Museum of Roman Shukhevych at Lviv during the new year. (Wikimedia Commons/National Police of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - Ukrainian attacks on the city of Donetsk on Monday killed four people, according to a Russian-appointed official on Ukrainian territory, while Russian airstrikes on several Ukrainian regions killed at least one person, local officials said.

Thirteen people were also injured in "incessant shelling" by Ukrainian forces in central Donetsk, wrote Denis Pushilin, head of the Donetsk region, on the Telegram messaging application, reported by Reuters January 2.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the shooting in Donetsk a "terrorist act" aimed at civilian infrastructure.

Separately, one person died as a result of shooting in the Russian border region of Belgorod, the local governor said via Telegram.

On the Ukrainian side, one person was killed and nine injured in a Russian drone attack on the southern port of Odesa, the region's governor Oleh Kiper said in a post on Telegram.

Kiper said falling debris from the downed drone caused several fires in residential buildings in different areas of the city.

A social media video, posted by Odesa Mayor Henadii Trukhanov, showed him inspecting a damaged apartment building with broken windows.

"They say, the way you greet the New Year is the way you live the year," Trukhanov wrote in a post.

"Well, this year Ukraine will break this rule: we will survive and we will win."

Meanwhile, officials in Ukraine's western region of Lviv, which borders Poland, said Russian airstrikes early in the New Year damaged university buildings in the town of Dubliany and damaged a monument to a 1940s Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) commander on the outskirts of Lviv.

Ukraine's air force said Russian airstrikes also targeted the Mykolaiv and Dnipro regions.

Reuters could not independently verify the Russian and Ukrainian reports. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.