6.919
civilians have been killed in the crossfire between the Ukrainian and Russian armies, according to the UN.
The war between Ukraine and Russia seems to gain new momentum in 2023, adding more deaths to the list of horrors that began in February of last year.
One of the most brutal attacks by Ukrainian forces on enemy positions in the Kherson region reportedly claimed 500 Russian casualties, according to the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, though its counterpart downplayed the impact, acknowledging only 63 casualties.
The figures refer to the artillery offensive that began on the night of December 31 and lasted until January 2. One of the missiles hit a barracks in the town of Makiivka, in Donetsk.
The situation exhausted the patience of some Russian politicians. The leader of the Just Russia party, Sergei Mironov, demanded an investigation into what happened in Makiivka, where apart from professional soldiers there were newly recruited civilians in the framework of the partial mobilization declared last year.
According to Mironov, “the investigation will determine what has happened: treason or criminal negligence. It is evident that neither the intelligence, nor the counterintelligence, nor the antiaircraft defenses acted as they should.
After this, the counterattack was not long in coming. The latest massive attack launched by Russia, the second this year, affected eight regions.
Troops attacked liberated areas south of Jerson on 79 occasions with artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems, mortars and tank shells, killing two people and wounding nine, Governor Yaroslav Yanushevych reported.
They also attacked 19 urban settlements near the border, in the Kharkov region, damaging homes and starting fires.
The Russian army also launched two night attacks on the Dnipropetrovsk region, firing 20 shells at the city of Nikopol and the community of Pokrovske.
And the Zaporizhia Regional Administration indicated that the attacks had damaged the infrastructure of 19 settlements.
The conflict will continue
“We have information that Russia plans prolonged attacks with Iranian Shahed drones,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, adding that “it is betting on the depletion of our people, our air defenses and our energy sector.”
Zelensky assured that in the first two days of 2023 “80 Iranian drones have already been shot down” and that in total, since September, they have destroyed 500 of these devices.
The Russian Ministry of Defense stated, for its part, that it has shot down 2,807 Ukrainian drones since the start of the war campaign in the country on February 24, 2022, in addition to 355 planes and 199 helicopters. In the last day, according to the Russian military, 13 unmanned aircraft have been shot down in the Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporizhia regions.
