Putin toasts the war with champagne as his missiles rock Kyiv

President Putin has accused the West of using Ukraine as a tool to destroy Russia in an inflammatory new year address defending the ten-month war.

“They are cynically using Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia,” he said in a recorded address to the nation in front of military personnel.

It was broadcast as families exchanged gifts and tucked into festive meals. A little time earlier at least one person was killed and eight injured in the latest Russian bombardment of Kyiv.

In the nine-minute video, the longest new year address of his two decades in power, Putin claimed that “moral, historic rightness” was on his side, insisting that Russia was “protecting people in our own historic territories” — a reference to areas such as the eastern Donbas region.

He suggested that western attempts to isolate Russia had failed, describing a “real sanctions war declared on us”. He added: “Those who started it expected the total destruction of our industry, finances, transport. That didn’t happen.”

Putin said that 2022 had been marked by “truly pivotal, fateful events”. He was then seen raising a glass of champagne with servicemen and women alongside him. Twitter was abuzz with suggestions that some were actors: one of the women appeared to have been pictured before with the leader, wearing civilian clothes.

Shortly before the broadcast Kyiv was rocked by at least ten explosions, the second significant missile barrage against Ukraine in three days. Vitali Klitschko, the mayor, confirmed that at least one person had been killed and eight wounded after explosions in the capital.

President Zelensky responded with his own new year’s message shared to Telegram, in which he warned Russians that their leader was destroying their country.

Switching from Ukrainian to Russian, Zelensky said: “Your leader wants to show you that he’s leading from the front, and his military is behind him. But in fact he is hiding. He’s hiding behind his military, his missiles, the walls of his residences and palaces.

“He’s hiding behind you, and he’s burning your country and your future. No one will forgive you for terror. No one in the world will forgive you for that. Ukraine will not forgive.”

Zelensky also appealed to Russian Christians, saying that as well as Saturday’s bombs, Putin had launched missiles on Christmas and Easter.

“They call themselves Christians ... but they are for the devil,” he said. “They are for him and with him.”

One of those wounded by the blasts was thought to be a Japanese journalist. A hotel just south of the city centre was hit and a residential building in another district was damaged, according to officials in Kyiv. The governor of the surrounding Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, had warned of a possible missile attack and said that air defences in the region were engaging targets.

 “The terrorist country launched several waves of missiles. They are wishing us a happy new year. But we will persevere,” Kuleba wrote on Telegram.

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, said of the Kyiv attacks: “This time, Russia’s mass missile attack is deliberately targeting residential areas, not even our energy infrastructure. War criminal Putin ‘celebrates’ new year by killing people. Russia must be kicked out of its UN security council seat which it has always occupied illegally.”

Six people were wounded in missile strikes in the southern region of Mykolaiv and two were hurt in a drone attack in the western city of Khmelnytskyi, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a presidential aide, said.

Before Putin’s address the Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said in a new year message to servicemen that victory in Ukraine was inevitable. Recognising Russia’s heavy losses and reiterating its baseless claims about the motivation for invading, he said: “The outgoing year will forever enter the military chronicle of the motherland, filled with your immortal deeds, selfless courage and heroism in the fight against neo-Nazism and terrorism.

“We will always remember our comrades who sacrificed themselves while performing combat missions in the name of saving civilians from genocide and violence only for the right to speak Russian.”