Russia said it had repelled a new Ukrainian drone attack on the annexed Crimean peninsula early Friday (local time), amid an increase in strikes from both sides.
“Air defense systems in service destroyed and intercepted 36 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles over the territory of the Republic of Crimea,” annexed by Moscow in 2014, the Russian Defense Ministry communicated on Telegram, claiming to have “foiled” the attack.
Another drone ordered by kyiv was also destroyed in the Krasnodar region (west), according to the same source.
On Thursday, Moscow said it had shot down ten Ukrainian missiles aimed at Sevastopol in Crimea, fragments of which falling in populated areas injured at least one person, according to the city’s governor Mikhail Razvojaev. During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, another missile was shot down off the coast of this city housing the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
“This was the most massive attack in recent times,” noted Mikhail Razvojaïev.
Crimea is a key region for the logistics of Russian forces which occupy part of southern Ukraine. This territory is regularly the target of Ukrainian missiles and drones.
These attacks come against a backdrop of escalation of Russian strikes in Ukraine and Ukrainian strikes in Russia and in the occupied zones.
The Russian town of Belgorod was also the target of a new series of Ukrainian bombings late Thursday, a few hours after schools in the region were ordered to extend their closure during the holidays due to the risk of new attacks.
New strikes and school closures
Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said at least two people were injured in the latest shelling of the city, as Telegram channels broadcast what appeared to be footage of damaged cars in the city.
“According to preliminary data, there are two victims. One man was injured by shrapnel in the forearm, the other was injured by shrapnel in the shin,” he said.
“Our air defense system operated over Belgorod and its district. Ten aerial targets were shot down as they approached the city,” he added.
If the Kremlin has been trying for almost two years to hide the reality of the war from the population, the strike on the city of Belgorod on December 30 showed that Russian territory and civilians could be drawn into the conflict.
This is the heaviest death toll in Russia since February 24, 2022, the date the invasion of Ukraine began: 25 dead and around a hundred injured in this city of 335,000 inhabitants, 50 km from the border with Ukraine.
It was struck the day after a massive bombardment of Ukrainian cities that left 55 dead, including at least 32 in kyiv, the bloodiest death toll for the Ukrainian capital since the start of the war.
On Thursday, after new strikes in the previous days, the regional authorities of Belgorod were forced to extend school holidays in schools in the municipality and surrounding localities.
“I report the decisions that were taken [à l’issue d’une réunion entre responsables] : Extend school holidays from January 9 to 19,” Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram.
In technical colleges and universities located in the localities affected by the measures, “it is recommended to organize remote sessions. If necessary, extend the vacation,” he added.
Mr. Gladkov did not specify the reasons for this emergency decision but his region seems particularly targeted by Ukrainian reprisals following Russian bombings.
Keystrokes in response
In addition to the deadly attack on December 30, Belgorod was targeted on Tuesday, after Russian attacks on kyiv and Kharkiv (six dead), by four successive waves of Ukrainian missiles, which left one dead and eleven injured.
kyiv has said nothing about these bombings on Russian territory but they seem to be part of a new tactic: Responding to strikes on Ukrainian cities with strikes on Russian cities.
This escalation comes while the front has been largely frozen for more than a year, even if the Russians have taken the initiative on the battlefield since the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the summer of 2023.
The Russian army has intensified its missile fire and explosive drone launches to, according to experts interviewed by AFP, test and saturate Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, while exhausting its stocks of Western munitions.
It is also about hitting the Ukrainian defense industry, which kyiv is trying to strengthen to compensate for the erosion of Western aid.
A tactic which worries the general staff of the Ukrainian army, a high-ranking officer of which revealed to AFP that the mobile anti-aircraft defense now only had enough ammunition to face “a few” new Russian strikes of magnitude.
He, like President Volodymyr Zelensky and his bodyguards, have asked their Western allies for “more” munitions and other modern systems capable of responding to the Russian armada.
A NATO-Ukraine meeting is due to take place on this subject on January 17 in Brussels, at the request of kyiv.
Wedding
On Thursday, three civilians were again killed in Russian bombardment of the regions of Kirovograd (center), Kherson (south) and Donetsk (east). Another person died the day before in the latter region.
The upsurge in hostilities in recent days, however, did not prevent the largest exchange of prisoners between kyiv and Moscow from taking place on Wednesday, the first since August 2023.
More than 230 soldiers from each side were released and, on Thursday, a Ukrainian military doctor released the day before said “yes” to her fiancé’s marriage proposal. The latter had fought together in Mariupol, during the terrible siege of this southeastern city in the spring of 2022.
On the economic level, Ukraine must finally face the blockage of the four main border crossings with Poland, a country allied with Kiev but whose farmers have been demanding for several months an end to the system of exemption from work permits in the EU from which their Ukrainian counterparts benefit.