Day 684 of the Invasion of Ukraine: At Least 3 Dead After Russia’s Deadliest Attack In 2024

Day 684 of the invasion of Ukraine. Summary of key events in the last 24 hours:

• Russia launched one of the largest airstrikes on Ukraine since the beginning of the year
• Ukrainian authorities have reported three deaths in a massive Russian missile attack this morning
• The Ukrainian poet Maxim Kryvtsov was killed at the front at the age of 33

Russia launched one of the largest airstrikes on Ukraine since the beginning of the year

Russia launched a large-scale missile attack across Ukraine at the start of the morning rush hour on Monday, hitting residential and industrial facilities and injuring several people, Ukrainian officials said, Reuters reported.

According to the "Financial Times", this is one of the largest airstrikes in Ukraine since the numerous missile and drone attacks on New Year's Eve.

All of Ukraine was placed on an airstrike alert from around 06:00 a.m. local time, with the Ukrainian air force saying the country had come under several waves of threat from cruise missiles and, in some regions, ballistic missiles, Reuters reported.

The Financial Times quoted Ukraine's air force as saying missiles had been fired at cities across the country and that it had spotted 11 strategic bombers in Russian airspace.

"The enemy is fiercely attacking peaceful towns," Oleksandr Vilkul, mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, wrote on the Telegram app. According to him, a shopping center was hit. He also said that full information on the extent of potential damage would be revealed after the Russian attack was over.

Consequences of missile strikes on Dnipropetrovsk region published by prosecutor's office

The photo shows Novomoskovsk and Kryvyi Rih. pic.twitter.com/gq134E4CQt

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) January 8, 2024

The targets of the Russian attack and the overall scale of the strikes are still unclear, and Moscow has yet to comment, Reuters notes.

Anatoly Kurtiev, secretary of the city council of southeastern Zaporizhzhia, wrote on Telegram that a rocket attack on the city had resulted in injuries, but did not provide further details.

At least one woman was injured in an attack on the second largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv, Mayor Igor Terekhov reported in Telegram. He said industrial facilities were hit, leading to a fire.

Five explosions were heard in the city of Zaporizhzhia, and at least two people were injured, regional governor Yuri Malashko said. "The rockets hit residential areas," he wrote on Telegram.

Ukrainian military officials in other cities, including Dnipropetrovsk and Khmelnytskyi, also said their cities had come under "large-scale missile attack" from Russia.

Ukrainian authorities have reported three deaths in a massive Russian missile attack this morning

Ukrainian authorities have reported three deaths in a massive Russian missile attack this morning. There are also reports of many wounded in the shelling of residential and industrial sites in various regions.

Around 06:00, an air alert was declared throughout Ukraine due to the danger of missile attacks. Military authorities in a number of regions reported explosions. Industrial sites in the second largest city of Kharkiv were hit. Zaporizhzhia is also affected.

Ukrainian forces destroyed 18 of 51 missiles of various types fired during today's wave of Russian airstrikes, Ukraine's air force said, Reuters reported. The statement said Russia fired 32 cruise missiles overnight, as well as eight Shahed drones, and that all the drones were downed.

The enemy is hitting civilian targets - high-rise buildings, private houses, a shopping center, President Volodymyr Zelensky's office emphasized after the attacks and added that bad weather complicates the situation.

Zelensky himself called on the Europeans to join forces and increase military production:

"We see that Russia's aggressive ambitions can be stopped only if we have enough force, and that's why we have to be together, with weapons production on a much larger scale," Zelensky said.

On the Russian side, they claim that the Belgorod region has been repeatedly attacked with artillery and drones during the day. 350 kilometers is the border between the two countries in the district. More than 110 shells and 4 explosive devices from drones were fired at the area from the Ukrainian side.

Observers note that nearly two years after the full-scale Russian invasion and with a stalemate on the front, both sides are increasingly turning to airstrikes on the enemy's territory.

The Ukrainian poet Maxim Kryvtsov was killed at the front at the age of 33

Ukrainian poet Maxim Kryvtsov was killed on the front line, the association of Ukrainian writers PEN Ukraine reported on January 7. Krivtsov's mother confirmed the death of her 33-year-old son in a comment under his latest Facebook post. Colleagues and friends of Kryvtsov also paid their respects in posts on social media.

Kryvtsov was among the participants in Ukraine's Euromaidan anti-government protests, one of the most important events in Ukraine's modern history, which ended the rule of pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych in 2013-2014, PEN Ukraine said in a statement ( the acronym PEN comes from Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, Novelists).

Kryvtsov joined the armed forces of Ukraine as a volunteer shortly after the start of the war in Ukraine's Donbass. He participated in combat operations as part of the Ukrainian volunteer battalion "Right Sector" (2014-2015), originally formed as part of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, and between 2016 and 2019 he was a senior machine gunner in the rapid reaction brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine.

In 2022, when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kryvtsov returned to the front line, where he published his book "Poems from the loophole", according to PEN Ukraine.

At the end of December, PEN Ukraine included the publication in its list of the best Ukrainian books for 2023.

"My worst fear is coming true: I am in a new Red Renaissance (Розстриляне видродженные, Червый ренанесанс). As in the 1930s, Ukrainian artists are killed, their manuscripts disappear and their memory erased," wrote the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina in the preface to the published diary of another author, Volodymyr Vakulenko, killed during the Russian occupation of Izyum.

Amelina, who found Vakulenko's notes hidden by him from the Russians in his yard and initiated the publication of the diary, was also killed in the Russian War. She died on July 1 after being seriously injured in a Russian missile attack on Kramatorsk, the Kyiv Independent recalls.

Vakulenko and Amelina are among dozens of Ukrainian cultural figures killed as a result of Russian aggression in Ukraine. There are no official figures for such losses, but according to two lists compiled and supplemented by PEN Ukraine, the full-scale invasion claimed the lives of at least 65 Ukrainian cultural figures. Among them is the Honored Artist of Ukraine Viktoria Tymoshenko, who died as a result of a rocket attack on January 2.

"And in fifty years the next ‘Russian scumbags’, descendants of the current murderers, will ask us again - well, where are your Nobel laureates?", wrote the writer Tamara Zernya, republishing one of his poems.

"I had a terrible dream that I often dreamed: I was walking around Kyiv with a machine gun, I was waiting at the subway station with a weapon in my lap. I am one of those terrible people who said that the war should spread to the streets like a fire. To understand and the others what is happening. On the morning of February 24, I deeply regretted these thoughts," Kryvtsov said in an interview after the start of the war.

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