US intelligence assessed the allegation as false, indicating Putin misrepresented the incident.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Russia released videos of alleged drone wreckage and claimed it had decoded files proving the attack, but Ukraine called the footage \u201claughable\u201d and accused Moscow of staging the incident to derail the peace talks.<\/p>\n
The two countries exchanged drone strikes on each other\u2019s energy grids as the New Year began, according to local officials.<\/p>\n
Kyiv has denied Russian claims that Ukrainian drones deliberately struck a cafe and hotel in the occupied village of Khorly in Kherson, killing at least 28 people.<\/p>\n
Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman of Russia\u2019s Investigative Committee, had claimed in a statement that the strike targeted a hotel where at least 100 civilians were celebrating New Year\u2019s Eve overnight into Thursday. A total of 31, including five minors, were hospitalised with injuries.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Ukraine\u2019s General Staff, Dmytro Lykhovii, denied attacking civilians.<\/p>\n
He told Ukraine\u2019s public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that Ukrainian forces \u201cadhere to the norms of international humanitarian law\u201d and \u201ccarry out strikes exclusively against Russian military targets, facilities of the Russian fuel and energy sector, and other lawful targets\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Lykhovii said that General Staff published an explicit list of targets that the Ukrainian army struck on the night of New Year\u2019s Eve that did not include occupied parts of the Kherson region.<\/p>\n
Russian missiles struck a multi-storey apartment building in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine yesterday, leaving the building in ruins and injuring at least 25 people, officials said, but Russia denied that an attack had taken place.<\/p>\n
Photographs and videos posted online showed smoke rising from an area of vast destruction, with emergency crews making their way through rubble and large chunks of building materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cMissile strikes in central Kharkiv have nearly destroyed a five-storey dwelling,\u201d regional governor Oleh Syniehubov told Ukrainian television, saying that according to preliminary information two ballistic missiles had struck the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cRescue teams are on site. They are primarily clearing rubble and searching for people underneath.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Syniehubov said 25 people were injured, with 16 in hospital, including a woman in serious condition. He said customers may have been at shops and a cafe on the building\u2019s first floor when the explosion occurred.<\/p>\n
Mayor Ihor Terekhov put the casualty toll at 30 injured.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s defence ministry, writing on Telegram, said reports of an attack were untrue and suggested the blast at the site had been caused by the detonation of Ukrainian ammunition.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublished video footage seconds before the explosion shows thick smoke of unknown origin which, to a high probability, would indicate that a detonation of stored Ukrainian military ammunition occurred at the \u2018Persona\u2019 shopping centre,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The ministry said the reports sought to distract world attention from the New Year\u2019s Eve strike on a hotel in a Russian-held part of Kherson region in southern Ukraine, which it blamed on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
President Volodymyr Zelensky named Ukraine\u2019s defence spy chief as his top adviser yesterday, placing a popular military leader at the heart of decision-making as Kyiv seeks to strengthen its defences against Russia and its hand in US-backed peace talks.<\/p>\n
The appointment of Kyrylo Budanov, a decorated war veteran widely respected by Ukrainians, as presidential chief of staff marks a significant shift for a position traditionally occupied by a civilian mainly focused on domestic politics.<\/p>\n
Mr Budanov (39) replaces long-time Zelensky confidante Andriy Yermak, a widely criticised power broker who resigned in November amid a corruption scandal that fuelled public anger as Ukraine fights for survival against Russia.<\/p>\n
Mr Zelensky will be hoping the appointment can help restore trust in his leadership and state institutions at a difficult moment, with Russia advancing on the battlefield and the US pressuring Kyiv to quickly end the nearly four-year war.<\/p>\n
Writing on X, Mr Zelensky said Ukraine \u201cneeds greater focus\u201d on security, the military and diplomacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cKyrylo has specialised experience in these areas and sufficient strength to deliver results,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
Later, Mr Zelensky said he would appoint the current head of foreign intelligence, Oleh Ivashchenko, as the new military intelligence chief and that he also intended to replace the head of the border service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US intelligence assessed the allegation as false, indicating Putin misrepresented the incident. Earlier, Russia released videos of alleged…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,550,7,8,551,2263,5445,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-266517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topstories","22":"tag-ukraine","23":"tag-vladimir-putin","24":"tag-volodymyr-zelensky","25":"tag-world","26":"tag-world-news","27":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115835992557422996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}