by Russian authorities saying on Saturday that a Ukrainian attack on the city of Belgorod had killed at least 14 people, including three children, and wounded more than 100, in the deadliest attack on a Russian city since the start of the war nearly two years ago.
Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that Ukraine had attacked Belgorod – a regional center of some 330,000 residents about 40 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border – with two missiles and several rockets, adding that the attack was “indiscriminate” and “would not go unpunished.”
The ministry said most of the rockets had been shot down, but some debris had fallen on the city. The Ukrainian government has not officially commented on the Belgorod attack and the Russian claims could not immediately be verified.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of the Belgorod region, saying that a residential area in the city center had been hit. The Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia posted a video of the aftermath of the bombing that showed burning cars, injured people being taken to shelters and broken glass in city buildings. And Russian state television transmission Videos posted by Belgorod residents showed plumes of smoke over the city, broken glass near residential buildings and people lying on sidewalks.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia saying that an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council would be called on Saturday to discuss the attack.
The attack on Belgorod was in response to Russia’s airstrike on Friday against Ukraine, said a Ukrainian intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, adding that only military facilities had been hit. The attack on Ukraine, one of the largest of the war, killed at least 39 people, injured about 160 more and damaged civilian and military infrastructure.
On Saturday, Ukrainian rescuers were still pulling bodies from the rubble of a factory that was attacked in the center of kyiv, the capital. according to local authorities.
On Saturday night, Ukrainian authorities said, Russia launched an assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which is about 40 miles from Belgorod.
Oleh Syniehubov, head of the military administration of the Kharkiv region, saying that at least eight people had been injured and that residential buildings, businesses and a medical center had been damaged.
The attacks over the past two days underscore how both Moscow and kyiv remain willing to escalate a war that will most likely mark its second anniversary in February, despite Ukraine’s problems securing Western funding and a growing sense of war fatigue in Russia. .
Ukraine has said several times that it is not afraid to bring the war to Russian territory, and has previously attacked the Belgorod region with cross-border attacks and even brief ground attacks by Russian anti-Kremlin fighters backed by kyiv.
So far, attacks of this type have caused at least 50 deaths inside Russia. according to the United Nationsas well as the evacuation of a few thousand civilians and minor clashes with the Russian army.
While the details of Saturday’s attack by Ukraine were not immediately clear, the death toll alone made it noteworthy, shattering the sense of relative normality that has prevailed in Russia despite the war and bringing to Russia the kind of suffering that Ukrainians have endured throughout history. almost daily for almost two years. The attack will also likely embolden Russian pro-invasion hawks who have been arguing that Moscow should use a much tougher tactic in Ukraine.
The back-to-back airstrikes on Friday and Saturday come as Ukrainian and Russian troops are stuck on the ground in bloody and mostly inconclusive fighting. Moscow has made several gains along the front in recent weeks, but military experts say its gains are incremental and unlikely to lead to a major breakthrough in the near future.
