Multiple blasts rocked Kyiv and other areas of Ukraine, killing at least one person and wounding 14 others, in a sign that the pace of Russian attacks had picked up before New Year's.
Various residential buildings and civilian infrastructure were damaged in Kyiv on Saturday afternoon as part of massive attacks spanning the country. A top official in the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, published photos and video of a partially collapsed six-story hotel in Kyiv. Mayor Klitschko said a Japanese journalist was among those injured in the capital.
Mykolaiv Gov. Vitalii Kim said that the Russians were targeting civilians more directly than just by attacking infrastructure as in the past. At Kyiv’s central railway station on Saturday morning, Mykyta, still in his uniform, gripped a bouquet of pink roses tightly as he waited on platform 9 for his wife Valeriia to arrive from Poland. He hadn’t seen her in six months.
Back in February, fathers, husbands and sons had to stay behind as their wives, mothers and daughters boarded trains with small children seeking safety outside the country. Scenes of tearful goodbyes seared television screens andBut on the last day of the year marked by the brutal war, many returned to the capital to spend New Year’s Eve with their loved ones, despite the ongoing Russian attacks., no big celebrations are expected and a curfew will be in place as the clock rings in the new year.
On platform 8, another young couple reunited. University student Arseniia Kolomiiets, 23, has been living in Italy. Despite longing to see her boyfriend Daniel Liashchenko in Kyiv, Kolomiiets was scared of Russian missiles and drone attacks.“He was like, ‘Please come! Please come! Please come!’” she recalled. “I decided that scared is one part, but being with beloved ones on the holidays is the most important part. So, I overcome my fear and here I am now.