On the first night of the year, 45 Russian Sahed drones produced in Iran were shot down by Ukrainian forces, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who praised Ukrainians for their devotion to the military and to one another.
Ukrainians applauded from their balconies as their air defenses shot Russian missiles and drones out of the sky.
"Glory to Ukraine! Glory to heroes," some people cried from balconies in Kyiv as sirens wailed.
Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, posted on social media that the late-night attack's fragments had only moderately damaged the capital's core and that early indications suggested no one had been hurt or killed.
Attacks earlier on Saturday at the capital's residential complexes and a hotel left at least one person dead and more than 20 injured.
"Russia coldly and cowardly attacked Ukraine in the early hours of the new year. But Putin still does not seem to understand that Ukrainians are made of iron." U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink wrote on Twitter.
The head of Kyiv's police, Andrii Nebytov, shared a picture on the messaging app Telegram of what appeared to be a piece of a drone used in an attack on the city, with the handwritten message "Happy New Year" in Russian on it. "This wreckage is not at the front, where fierce battles are taking place, this is here, on a sports grounds, where children play," Nebytov said.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, long-range missiles were fired on New Year's Eve at Ukrainian drone manufacturing, storage, and launch facilities.
Since Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine in February, Russia has destroyed Ukrainian cities and slaughtered hundreds of civilians, saying that Ukraine is an artificial state whose pro-Western stance threatens Russia's security. Since then, Moscow has asserted that it has annexed around a fifth of Ukraine.
With military assistance from the West, Ukraine fought back and expelled Russian forces from more than half of the land they had taken. The front lines have mostly remained steady in recent weeks, with thousands of soldiers losing their lives in fierce trench fighting.
Russia has been attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure in large-scale missile and drone operations since October, leaving communities in the dark and chilly as winter approaches. Moscow claims the strikes are meant to weaken Ukraine's fighting capacity; Kyiv claims they serve no military function and are intended to harm people, which is considered a war crime.
On Saturday, amid almost complete darkness, in front of a flying Ukrainian flag, Zelenskyy delivered his own speech. He called the previous year a national awakening.
"We were told: you have no other option but to surrender. We say: we have no other option than to win," he said.
