KYIV: Russia carried out its second major round of missile attacks on Ukraine in three days on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said, with explosions reported throughout the country on New Year’s Eve.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least one person had been killed and eight wounded after a series of explosions in the capital. Reuters correspondents reported hearing 10 loud blasts in the city.
The mayor said one of those wounded by the blasts was a Japanese journalist who had been taken to hospital.
A hotel just south of Kyiv’s city center was hit and a residential building in another district was damaged, according to the city administration.
The governor of the surrounding Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, had warned shortly beforehand of a possible incoming missile attack, and said air defenses in the region were engaging targets.
“The terrorist country launched several waves of missiles. They are wishing us a happy New Year. But we will persevere,” Kuleba wrote on Telegram in a separate post after explosions shook the capital.
Other cities across Ukraine also came under fire. In the southern region of Mykolaiv, local governor Vitaliy Kim said on television that six people had been wounded.
In a separate post on Telegram, Kim said Russia had targeted civilians with the strikes, something Moscow has previously denied.
“According to today’s tendencies, the occupiers are striking not just critical... in many cities [they are targeting] simply residential areas, hotels, garages, roads.”
In the western city of Khmelnytskyi, two people were wounded in a drone attack, Ukrainian presidential aide Kyrylo Tymoshenko said.
The official also reported a strike in the southern industrial powerhouse city of Zaporizhzhia, which Tymoshenko said had damaged residential buildings.
Ukraine’s defense ministry responded with a defiant message posted on Telegram.
“With each new missile attack on civilian infrastructure, more and more Ukrainians are convinced of the need to fight until the complete collapse of Putin’s regime,” it wrote.
Russian missiles strike Kyiv on New Year’s Eve, at least one dead
https://arab.news/gc6ay
Russian missiles strike Kyiv on New Year’s Eve, at least one dead
- Explosions could be heard in the city, air defenses engaging
‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight over threats from nukes, climate change, AI
- At the end of the Cold War, the clock was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds
WASHINGTON: Earth is closer than it’s ever been to destruction as Russia, China, the US and other countries become “increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” a science-oriented advocacy group said Tuesday as it advanced its “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds till midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist members had an initial demonstration on Friday and then announced their results on Tuesday.
The scientists cited risks of nuclear war, climate change, potential misuse of biotechnology and the increasing use of artificial intelligence without adequate controls as it made the annual announcement, which rates how close humanity is from ending.
Last year the clock advanced to 89 seconds to midnight.
Since then, “hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation” needed to reduce existential risks, the group said.
They worry about the threat of escalating conflicts involving nuclear-armed countries, citing the Russia-Ukraine war, May’s conflict between India and Pakistan and whether Iran is capable of developing nuclear weapons after strikes last summer by the US and Israel.
International trust and cooperation is essential because, “if the world splinters into an us-versus-them, zero-sum approach, it increases the likelihood that we all lose,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the group’s science and security board.
The group also highlighted droughts, heat waves and floods linked to global warming, as well as the failure of nations to adopt meaningful agreements to fight global warming — singling out US President Donald Trump’s efforts to boost fossil fuels and hobble renewable energy production.
Starting in 1947, the advocacy group used a clock to symbolize the potential and even likelihood of people doing something to end humanity.
At the end of the Cold War, it was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds.
The group said the clock could be turned back if leaders and nations worked together to address existential risks.
