Russia said 20 people including two children had been killed and 111 injured in “indiscriminate” Ukrainian strikes allegedly including cluster bombs on the Russian provincial capital of Belgorod on Saturday, and vowed to retaliate.
The Belgorod region, which adjoins northern Ukraine, has like other Russian border zones suffered shelling and drone attacks all year that authorities have blamed on Ukraine, although none have previously been on such a scale.
A view shows a damaged house following what was said to be Ukrainian forces’ shelling in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, in the settlement of Urazovo in the Belgorod Region, Russia, on 30th December, 2023. PICTURE: Governor of Russia’s Belgorod Region Vyacheslav Gladkov via Telegram/Handout via Reuters
A view shows the Kharkiv Palace Hotel destroyed during a Russian missile strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on 30th December, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy
TWIN RUSSIAN MISSILE STRIKES ON KHARKIV INJURE 21, OFFICIALS SAY
Twin Russian missile strikes on central Kharkiv on Saturday injured at least 21 people, Ukrainian officials said.
The Kharkiv regional chief prosecutor said two boys aged 14 and 16 and a security advisor for a team of German journalists were among those injured. The missiles came from the direction of Belgorod, Russia, he added.
Russian officials said a Ukrainian attack on the provincial capital of Belgorod hours earlier killed 18 people and injured 111.
That came a day after Russia’s biggest air assault of the war, in which Ukrainian officials said at least 40 civilians were killed and 159 wounded in 158 missile and drone attacks across the country.
The head of the regional police in Kharkiv, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said preliminary evidence suggested Russia had used S-300 missiles as surface-to-surface weapons to hit Kharkiv.
One missile hit the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, and the second hit a residential building in central Kharkiv. Another three hit an industrial area but caused no damage, Tymoshenko said.
Oleh Synehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, said 10 of the victims were in hospital, and one woman was in a serious condition.
“We are fixing damage to a medical institution, multi-apartment residential buildings, shops, public places and transportation,” Synehubov said.
– NICK STARKOV and ELAINE MONAGHAN, Kharkiv, Ukraine, and Washington DC, US/Reuters
Newspaper Kommersant cited a source close to the Russian Investigative Committee as saying missiles fired from a multiple rocket launcher in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region had hit a skating rink on the central Cathedral Square, a shopping centre and residential buildings.
No official comment was immediately available from Kyiv, but the Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine quoted unnamed sources as saying Ukrainian forces had directed fire at military targets in Belgorod in response to the massive Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities the previous day.
News website Ukrainska Pravda quoted an unnamed security service source as blaming the destruction of civilian infrastructure on “unprofessional actions by Russian air defence, as well as deliberate and planned provocations”.
Russia’s mission to the United Nations in New York said it had requested a meeting of the Security Council which would begin at 4pm.
Air raid sirens had earlier sounded all over Belgorod as regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov urged all residents to move to shelters.
“Today, the Kyiv regime attempted an indiscriminate combined strike on the city of Belgorod with two ‘Olkha’ missiles in a banned cluster configuration, as well as Czech-made Vampire rockets,” the Defence Ministry said in a Telegram posting. “This crime will not go unpunished.”
“Apartments and shops hit”
It said most of the rockets including both the ‘Olkha’ missiles had been shot down, averting far greater casualties, although fragments had fallen on the city.
Governor Gladkov said 22 apartment buildings had been damaged along with a large number of commercial properties, shopping centres and shops, and that more than 100 cars had been damaged, most of them burned out.
Images posted by the Emergencies Ministry showed at least three burned out cars, and a commercial building with some broken windows. Other images posted online showed black smoke rising from the city.
Two residents told Reuters they had seen air defence missiles rising into the sky followed by explosions in the air and then louder blasts.
Russian state-run news agency RIA quoted the Kremlin as saying President Vladimir Putin had sent a team of health and emergency workers to Belgorod.
Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, in what it calls a “special military operation”, unleashed its biggest air attack of the war on Friday.
Ukrainian officials said 39 civilians had been killed and 159 wounded as Russia launched 158 missiles and drones at cities and towns across Ukraine.
Russia said its anti-aircraft units had destroyed 13 Ukrainian rockets over the Belgorod region on Friday, as well as 32 drones overnight over the nearby Bryansk, Oryol and Kursk regions and the Moscow region.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RIA that Britain and the United States had incited Ukraine to carry out “terrorist acts”, and said European Union countries must also bear blame for supplying it with weapons.
– Additional reporting by ELAINE MONAGHAN in Washington DC, US
