The Moscow-appointed governor in territories Russia has seized in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, Vladimir Saldo, claimed Thursday morning that at least 24 people were killed in what he described as a Ukrainian drone attack during New Year’s celebrations. Russian media reported that another 29 people were wounded.
Saldo said three drones struck the village of Hurli in southern Ukraine, on the Black Sea coast near Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. He said a cafe and a hotel in the village were hit.
5 View gallery
An image published by Russian media that it said shows the attack site in Moscow-controlled Kherson
Kherson is one of four regions in southern and eastern Ukraine where Russia has seized large areas since its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Although Russia does not control the entirety of those regions, it has formally annexed them.
The pro-Russian governor in occupied Kherson accused Ukrainians of having “deliberately burned people to death” in the attack, claims that have not been independently verified by non-Russian sources. Unusually, Russian media initially did not publish footage from the scene, showing only wounded people being carried on stretchers in a hospital. Several hours later, Russian outlets released images of charred buildings at the site, with bodies covered by blankets visible in some of the photos. Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv had not commented on the claims.
Today’s reports add to another explosive claim made by Russia this week, alleging that Ukraine attempted overnight between Sunday and Monday to attack the official residence of President Vladimir Putin in the Novgorod region. Russian officials said Ukraine launched 91 drones at the residence and that all were intercepted by Russian air defenses, with no casualties or damage reported.
The building in Novgorod has previously served not only Putin but also former President Boris Yeltsin and Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Russia portrayed the alleged attack as justifying a shift in its position in negotiations being led by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the war.
Shortly after announcing the purported attack, Putin spoke by phone with Trump, hours after Trump held a summit earlier in the week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Kremlin later said Trump was “shocked” upon hearing of the incident. Ukrainian officials quickly denied the Russian claims, calling them a lie aimed at undermining negotiations and laying the groundwork for a future Russian attack on government buildings in Kyiv.
European officials have also voiced serious doubts in recent days about the credibility of Russia’s assertions. In what appeared to be an effort to bolster its case, Russia’s Defense Ministry released a video Wednesday that it said showed one of the intercepted drones. The video shows a Russian soldier standing next to drone debris in a snowy area. The soldier says it was a Chaklun-V drone carrying about 13 pounds of explosives that did not detonate. International media said they could not verify the claims. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the video “ridiculous” and said Kyiv is “absolutely certain that such an attack did not occur.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that U.S. intelligence also assesses that Ukraine did not attempt to attack Putin’s residence in Novgorod. A person familiar with U.S. intelligence told the newspaper that Washington believes Ukraine was trying to strike a military target in the same general area, but not near the residence.
5 View gallery
Zelensky, Trump, Putin
(Photo: Sergei Supinsky/AFP, Mandel Ngan and Maxim Shemetov/various sources/AFP, )
Trump himself, who said shortly after the Russian claims emerged that he was “angry” upon hearing them but did not confirm that the attack had occurred, later cast doubt on Moscow’s account. In an unusual move, he shared on his Truth Social account a link to a New York Post opinion column arguing that the claim was false.
The column’s headline read: “Putin ‘attack’ bluster shows Russia is the one standing in the way of peace.” The article said that after Trump declared significant progress in talks, “Russian dictator Vladimir Putin chose lies, hatred, and death.” According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump shared the column after the CIA director briefed him on the latest intelligence regarding the matter.