Russia began Wednesday the evacuation of children from localities bordering Ukraine intensively bombarded for several days, and where the Kremlin considered the situation “alarming”.
Attacks have been mounting on Russian soil for weeks, culminating in an unprecedented drone assault on Moscow on Tuesday and a spectacular armed incursion last week into the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine.
For their part, the Russian forces, which have been leading an offensive against Ukraine since February 2022, launched several waves of massive strikes this week on the capital, Kiev, with missiles and explosive drones.
On Wednesday, the governor of Belgorod announced the start of the evacuation of children from two localities in the region which came under heavy artillery and mortar fire.
“Today, a first group of 300 children will be sent to Voronezh”, a town located some 250 km northeast of Belgorod, therefore further from the Ukrainian border, declared Viatcheslav Gladkov.
The decision was taken due to the “deteriorating” situation in the region, which suffered some 260 mortar and artillery fire on Tuesday alone, he added.
One person was killed on Tuesday evening and four people were injured in other “massive” strikes overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, Gladkov said.
“We are really concerned about this situation. The shelling of civilian targets continues” in Belgorod, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
“We haven’t heard a single word of condemnation from the West,” he said. “The situation is truly alarming. Measures are being taken,” he added, without elaborating.
This admission of concern comes at a time when Russia seems unable to stem the attacks that have been multiplying on its soil for weeks.
This notable increase in the number of attacks comes as Ukraine has claimed for several weeks that it is completing its preparations before launching a major offensive.
Ukrainian ship ‘destroyed’
On Tuesday, the Russian authorities announced that they had neutralized eight drones which had managed to reach the capital Moscow and its region, located 500 km from Ukraine. Two people were slightly injured by falling debris on apartment buildings.
Last week, the Belgorod region was the scene of a major incursion, with dozens of armed men from Ukraine spreading panic for two days before being repelled by aviation and artillery Russians.
Since then, border areas in the Belgorod region have been bombarded daily.
On Wednesday, a drone also fell within the perimeter of an oil refinery in Ilski, in the Krasnodar region, without causing any casualties or damage, local authorities announced.
This same refinery had already been targeted in early May by two drone attacks which had caused fires.
In Ukraine, five people were killed and 19 injured in a bombardment by Kiev forces in an area occupied by Russian troops in the Luhansk region, announced the authorities installed by Moscow.
Separately, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that Moscow destroyed the “last” Ukrainian warship still operational this week.
“On 29 (May), as a result of a high-precision weapons strike by the Russian Aerospace Forces on the area of docking military boats in the port of Odessa, the last warship of the Ukrainian Navy, the “Yuri Olefirenko”, was destroyed,” the Russian ministry said in a statement.
Asked by AFP, the spokesman for the Ukrainian naval forces, Oleg Tchalyk, did not formally deny, but called not to “pay attention” to Russian sources.