Russian shelling kills 4 as Ukraine prepares to watch Christmas on Dec. 25 for the primary time
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian shelling in southern Ukraine’s Kherson area killed 4 individuals Sunday, together with an 87-year-old man and his 81-year-old spouse who died after a strike on their condominium constructing.
The barrage injured 9 different individuals, together with a 15-year-old, sparked fires in houses and at a non-public medical facility, and set an area gasoline pipeline alight, the pinnacle of the regional navy administration, Oleksandr Prokudin, mentioned.
“There are no holidays for the enemy,” Andrii Yermak, the pinnacle of the Ukrainian president’s workplace, wrote on social media, commenting on the Kherson assault. “They do not exist for us as long as the enemy kills our people and remains on our land.”
The shelling throughout Kherson reached the middle of the area’s capital metropolis of the identical identify. The assault came about as Ukraine ready to formally have fun Christmas for the primary time on Dec. 25, having beforehand marked the date on Jan. 7.
Some Orthodox Ukrainians noticed Christmas on Dec. 25 final 12 months in response to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The Russian Orthodox Church observes the start of Jesus on Jan. 7.
The cathedral within the Monastery of the Caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kyiv, held its Christmas celebration on Jan. 7 of this 12 months, however the service was held within the Ukrainian language for the primary time within the 31 years of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed laws in July transferring the general public Christmas Day vacation to Dec. 25. though one in every of Ukraine’s two competing Orthodox church group’s is sticking with the January date dictated by the Julian calendar. To mark Christmas Eve on Dec. 24, Zelenskyy addressed the nation in a video filmed in entrance of the floodlit St. Sophia Cathedral in central Kyiv.
He reassured Ukrainians combating in opposition to Russia’s full-scale invasion of the nation that “step by step, day by day, the darkness is losing.”
“Today, this is our common goal, our common dream. And this is precisely what our common prayer is for today. For our freedom. For our victory. For our Ukraine,” Zelenskyy mentioned.
Kherson was not the one area of Ukraine to come back beneath assault Sunday. Russian forces launched 15 drone strikes in a single day, and 14 of the Iranian-made Shahed drones have been destroyed over the Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, and Khmelnytskyi areas, the Ukrainian air power reported.
Meanwhile, two individuals have been wounded in the course of the Russian shelling of 20 cities and villages throughout northern Ukraine’s Kharkiv area, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov mentioned.
In Russia, a person was injured within the Bryansk area after a village near the Ukrainian border got here beneath hearth, the area’s governor, Alexander Bogomaz, mentioned.
