Ukraine claims to have shot down nearly 500 enemy drones since September
Ukrinform reports that on national television in Ukraine, Yuriy Ignat, spokesperson for the air force command of the armed forces of Ukraine, has claimed that nearly 500 Russian drones have been downed since September. Ukrinform quotes him telling viewers:
We will prepare. We shoot down drones. As you can see, 84 drones were shot down in two days – on New Year’s Eve and the following day. 100% were shot down by air defence forces. Such results have never been achieved before. The number of drones is already approaching 500 since September 11. That is 500 drones shot down.
Key events
Young acrobats from circus schools across Ukraine dazzled audiences in Budapest this week when the city hosted a Ukrainian youth circus festival to showcase the talents of children forced by the war to train underground or without electricity.
Reuters reports that, after months of practice in their home cities of Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa and Donetsk, the children aged between six and 17 years gave more than 30 performances alongside competitors from Hungary, Switzerland, Mexico and Italy at Budapest’s Capital Circus. Its director Peter Fekete said:
As these children are training in air raid shelters by candlelight from morning to night, [we thought] there must be a place where they can show their talent and knowledge. We must give them faith that it is worth doing the work, it is worth the training, so we stopped our regular programme for two days this January and … handed over the circus to our Ukrainian friends.
Circus artist Mariia Kravchenko, aged 13, from the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, had trained for the circus festival in unheated shelters amid the Russian attacks.
“I trained in the circus in Dnipro but we have the war in Ukraine and I was training with air raid sirens [on] and it was hard,” she said with a faint smile, as she prepared to perform her hula hoop show dressed in Ukrainian colours with flowers in her hair.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, reaffirmed that Ukraine “needs our support more than ever”, as he hosted Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, in Paris, with Sweden having taken over the rotating presidency of the European Union.
Germany’s defence ministry is looking into whether it will need to extend its leadership of a Nato joint task force beyond 2023 due to delays by the UK, the next country in line to lead, according to local media reports that cite German army sources.
Germany’s Bundeswehr took over command of the Very High Joint Readiness Task Force (VJTF) for 12 months, which requires the leader to be operational within 48 to 72 hours. Germany is providing up to 2,700 soldiers as lead nation.
According to the sources, the UK will only be able to take over leadership in 2024, several months later than planned, the news outlet said.
The VJTF was created after Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and was deployed for the first time for collective defence after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
It was not immediately clear what effect a delay in change of leadership might have on operations.
The leadership position is rotated among members to share the burden that it places on the military, and brigades are bound to the VJTF for three years to help with the stand-up, stand-by and stand-down phases, meaning they are not available for other missions or international obligations.
“There is nothing official I can tell you about this at the moment,” a German defence ministry spokesperson told Reuters. The UK’s defence ministry has not responded to the news agency’s request for comment.
Summary of the day so far
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Russia is planning a protracted campaign of attacks with Iranian drones to “exhaust” Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned in his Monday night address. Ukraine, he said, had to “act and do everything so that the terrorists’ fail in their aim, as all their others have failed.”
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On national television in Ukraine, Yuriy Ignat, spokesperson for the air force command of the armed forces of Ukraine, has claimed that nearly 500 Russian drones have been downed since September.
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The Ukrainian strike on a Russian base in Makiivka, Donetsk, has generated “significant criticism of Russian military leadership”, according to a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). A number of prominent Russian pro-war bloggers and commentators acknowledged the attack on Makiivka, with many suggesting the number of casualties was higher than the figures officially reported.
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The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces has said up to 10 units of Russian military equipment of various types in occupied Makiivka were damaged or destroyed. Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, but its military reported the Makiivka attack as “a strike on Russian manpower and military equipment”.
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Satellite images taken by US-based company Planet Labs that purportedly showing the aftermath of the strike on Makiivka have circulated online, showing the building that allegedly housed the Russian troops before and after it was hit. The images, dated 2 January, show a building almost completely razed to the ground. Unverified footage posted online of the aftermath of the blast also showed a huge building reduced to smoking rubble.
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It is unlikely Russia will achieve a significant breakthrough near Bakhmut in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region in the coming weeks, the UK Ministry of Defence has said. This is due in part to Russia likely conducting offensive operations in the area at only platoon or section level, it said.
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The French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, said this morning she was more confident over the situation of French energy supplies for the next few weeks, citing lower consumption and an increase in nuclear output capacity.
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Nato countries will discuss their defence spending targets in the coming months as some of them call for turning a 2% target into a minimum figure, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told the German news agency DPA.
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Ukraine and the European Union will hold a summit in Kyiv on 3 February to discuss financial and military support, Zelenskiy’s office said in a statement on Monday.
That is it from me, Martin Belam, for now. I will be back later on. I am handing you over to my colleague Kevin Rawlinson for the next few hours.
Ukraine claims to have shot down nearly 500 enemy drones since September
Ukrinform reports that on national television in Ukraine, Yuriy Ignat, spokesperson for the air force command of the armed forces of Ukraine, has claimed that nearly 500 Russian drones have been downed since September. Ukrinform quotes him telling viewers:
We will prepare. We shoot down drones. As you can see, 84 drones were shot down in two days – on New Year’s Eve and the following day. 100% were shot down by air defence forces. Such results have never been achieved before. The number of drones is already approaching 500 since September 11. That is 500 drones shot down.
If you missed it overnight, there was a moment on French TV when a blast occurred behind a journalist who was doing a live two-way from Kramatorsk.
Oleksiy Kuleba, the governor of Kyiv, has posted to Telegram to reiterate that residents must act if they hear air alarms. He writes:
It is also important to keep safety in mind at all times, especially during the holidays. The enemy does not manage to spoil the holiday for Ukrainians. Don’t lose your vigilance. If you hear an alarm, go to safe places.
He also reiterated the message that the power supply is expected to work continuously at the moment, but cautioned over consumption, saying:
As of now, the Kyiv region is fully supplied with electricity. Emergency and planned blackouts are not introduced in the region. However, this situation may change. It is extremely necessary to continue economical consumption.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted a selection of images from the war to Telegram alongside the following message:
There are no small actions in a big war. There are no unnecessary ones. Each of us is a fighter. Each of us is a front. Each of us is the basis of defence. We fight as one team – the whole country, all our regions.
It is unseasonably warm in Ukraine today, and for that reason Ukrenergo has predicted that there will be no planned electricity outages before 2pm. However, Suspilne reports that Ukraine’s energy company has predicted that consumption limits will be required in the afternoon and evening as demand rises.
Here is an image out of Kyiv from the last few days showing Ukrainian armed forces receiving a van from a repair shop that has been converted to doing work for the war effort. The Autocomp shop formerly specialised in collision repairs, but that changed after Russia invaded in February and volunteers reached out about preparing vehicles to send to the front.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s public broadcaster, is reporting details of attacks on Kherson yesterday. It has posted to Telegram:
During the day of 2 January, the Russian army shelled the Kherson region 79 times. Two people died, nine were injured, said the head of [the region, Yaroslav] Yanushevich. The Russian army attacked Kherson itself 32 times. Shells hit a car dealership, a utility company, private and apartment buildings.
Reuters has a quick snap to say that the French prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, said this morning she was more confident over the situation of French energy supplies for the next few weeks, citing lower consumption and an increase in nuclear output capacity.
Dmytro Zhyvytskyi, the governor of Sumy region, has also updated residents on events overnight. He claimed Russia fired at three settlements, including an attack on railway infrastructure in Krasnopillia. He gave no details of any casualties.
Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv, has posted his daily operational briefing for residents on Telegram. He says that overnight there were no air alarms in his western region of Ukraine, and that the electricity supply has no scheduled blackouts for today.
The Russian state-owned media agency Tass is reporting that the drone company Filming from the Air has said it is supplying new small imaging drones to the Russian military for use in Ukraine.
Tass quotes a company spokesperson saying that the drones are much cheaper than the Chinese-manufactured equivalent that Russia has been using, and that each “is equipped with a compact thermal imager capable of detecting the presence of enemy forces at any time of the day, and also has the ability to be equipped with a grenade-drop device”.
Tass reports that the company first presented the model in November at an exhibition in Moscow.
