Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia is planning a prolonged campaign of drone attacks to exhaust his country’s air defenses and energy infrastructure.
In his nightly address, Zelensky claimed Russia was “counting on exhausting our people, our air defenses, our energy sector,” imploring Ukrainians to “do everything” so that “this goal of terrorists fails like all the others.” More than 80 Iranian-made Shahed drones have reportedly been shot down over Ukraine in the first two days of the new year. On Monday, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat said that the Russians could carry out another major attack before Orthodox Christmas on January 7.
The Russian defense ministry yesterday confirmed the deaths of 63 soldiers in the village of Makiivka in the occupied Donbas after an attack on Saturday night by Ukrainian forces. The Strategic Communications Center of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and some Russian propaganda channels previously claimed that some 400 Russians were killed in the strike, according to reports by Radio Svoboda.
Source: Radio Gdańsk, Radio Poland, PAP
Polish tennis stars Iga Świątek and Hubert Hurkacz are celebrating recent wins at the United Cup in Australia, with the Polish team set to take on Switzerland in a series of matches today.
The combined Polish team featuring Hurkacz and Świątek, along with Magda Linette and Daniel Michalski, took an early lead in the competition against Kazakhstan after decisive wins by Świątek, Hurkacz, and Linette over the holiday weekend. Hurkacz and Świątek completed Poland’s 4-1 win over Kazakhstan with a 6-3, 6-4 victory in mixed doubles against Zhibek Kulambayeva and Grigoriy Lomakin on Sunday.
The Polish team now faces Switzerland in Group B, with Hurkacz set to face Stan Wawrinka, Magda Linette facing Jil Teichman, and a mixed doubles match of Świątek/Hurkacz vs. Bencic/Wawrinka. Świątek started things off well with a 6:3, 7:6 (7-3) win yesterday against Belinda Bencic in Brisbane, but Daniel Michalski’s loss to Marc-Andrea Huesler left the score tied at 1-1. The winners will qualify for the next stage of the tournament, the so-called City Final, set for January 8 in Sydney.
The United Cup is a new team event featuring 18 countries in a two-day mixed competition comprising two ATP and two WTA singles matches and one mixed-doubles match.
Source: Radio Poland, PAP
The acclaimed 20th-century Polish novel “Chłopi” or “The Peasants,” by Nobel Prize-winning author Władysław Reymont, is finally available in English more than a century after it was originally published.
Described by its new publisher as “one of Poland’s most engrossing twentieth-century epics” and Reymont’s “love song to a lasting dream of rural Poland,” the novel was initially published in four volumes between 1904 and 1909. “Peasants” later won Reymont the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924 and was made into a feature film in 1922 and 1972, with a more modern, artistic adaptation developed in 2021 by director Dorota Kobiela.
The book has been translated into 27 different languages, with the English version translated by Anna Zarenko and published by Penguin Classics.
Source: Radio Poland, PAP
The City of Gdańsk will be collecting old Christmas trees for recycling and disposal over the next several weeks and asks that residents follow basic protocols when disposing of their Christmas trees.
According to Cyprian Maciejewski from the Gdańsk Urząd Miejski, trees for disposal should also be “clean, natural trees,” without decorations, and should not be wrapped in foil or plastic or left in stands or pots.
Trees should be left next to garbage bin collection sites or in spots designated by building administrators. Single-family residences can leave trees in the same location where bags with recyclable materials are put out for collection by municipal services. The trees should not be placed in brown “bio” bins, as this makes it difficult to collect other biodegradable waste. The trees will be picked up until the end of February according to the regular “bio” collection schedule. They will then be mulched by special processing machines at the recycling plant and later used for composting.
Source: Radio Gdańsk
Weather
Today will be mostly cloudy with a slight chance for rain showers later in the afternoon and a strong breeze coming in from the west. Temperatures will peak around a high of 7°C, or 44°F, before dropping to a low of 1°C or 34°F overnight. Additional rain showers are expected tomorrow, with a chance for some snow later in the week.
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