The southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was subjected on Sunday to numerous shelling attacks from Russian-occupied parts of the Kherson region, across the Dnieper River, local officials said. The head of the Kherson city administration, Roman Mrochko, said two people died in the attacks and several others were wounded.
Air defense shot down 21 of 28 drones launched by Russia overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force said Sunday. Russia also launched three anti-aircraft missiles against Ukraine.
On an unannounced visit to the country this weekend, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa pledged Japan’s continued support for Ukraine. Speaking at a press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv on Sunday, she said that Japan had decided to “contribute $37 million to the NATO trust fund to provide drone detection systems,” according to Japan’s Foreign Ministry.
In Russia, more than 100 residents of the Russian border city of Belgorod have evacuated to an area further away from Ukraine, local officials said.
“On behalf of the regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, we met the first Belgorod residents who decided to move to the safest place. More than 100 people were placed in our temporary accommodation centers,” Andrey Chesnokov, head of the Stary Oskol district, some 115 kilometers (71 miles) from Belgorod, wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod on Dec. 30 killed 25 people, officials there said, with rocket and drone attacks continuing throughout this week.
Meanwhile, Russian military personnel marked Orthodox Christmas on Sunday. Russia’s Defense Ministry said that military priests led prayer services on the front line both on Sunday and on Christmas Eve night.
At Christmas Eve services at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence in the western suburbs of Moscow, families of military personnel who lost their lives in the war in Ukraine joined Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Many of our men, our courageous, heroic guys, are warriors of Russia even now, during the holiday — with arms in hand, they defend the interests of our country,” he said to the attending families, according to the Kremlin’s press service.
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, mentioned the conflict in Ukraine in his annual Christmas interview with the Russian state news agency TASS. “The trials that befall us today … are not capable of crushing our worldview, which directly includes love for the Motherland and readiness to defend it,” he said, when asked how to reassure Russians in the midst of military and civilian deaths.
