(Moscow) Moscow accused the Ukrainian army of an attack that left 14 dead, including two children, and 108 injured on Saturday in Belgorod, a Russian town near the border, the day after massive strikes killed 39 people in Ukraine .
“According to the latest information, 12 adults and two children died in Belgorod,” the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry said on Telegram, adding that “108 people, including 15 children, were injured.”
Images posted online show cars on fire, buildings with broken windows, as well as columns of black smoke rising on the horizon.
PHOTO FROM TELEGRAM, RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF EMERGENCY SITUATIONS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Images, published by the authorities, show cars on fire and buildings with broken windows.
Ukraine regularly carries out strikes in Russia, particularly in the regions closest to its territory, but their toll is generally much lower.
The Ministry of Defense assured that this attack would not go “unpunished”.
Russian forces managed to intercept two missiles and “most” of the rockets launched against the city, he added, which avoided an “infinitely more serious” death toll.
However, several rockets and missile debris fell on Belgorod, he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was “informed” of this attack on “residential neighborhoods,” said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, according to Russian agencies.
Kyiv has not yet reacted to the Russian accusations.
Earlier, the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported the death of two children during a Ukrainian strike in the regional capital.
The authorities did not specify whether these victims were included in the toll communicated by the ministry, or if they were separate strikes.
For his part, the governor of the Russian border region of Bryansk, Alexandre Bogomaz, claimed that a Ukrainian attack had killed “a child born in 2014”.
Bodies pulled out of the rubble
Ukraine was still counting its dead on Saturday, after intense strikes by Russia the day before on several cities, including the capital Kyiv, which killed 39 people and injured dozens of others.
The wave of attacks, one of the most violent since the start of the war almost two years ago, targeted buildings, a maternity ward and even a shopping center, but also industrial and military infrastructures.
PHOTO YEVHEN TITOV, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Firefighters work to put out a fire after a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
“At present, there are unfortunately 39 dead” across the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Saturday, adding that around a hundred people had been injured.
“Nearly 120 towns and villages were affected,” he said, adding that search operations were continuing.
In Kyiv alone, at least 16 people were killed on Friday, according to the local administration.
Bodies continued to be pulled out of the rubble on Saturday in this city, where deadly attacks had become rarer in recent months.
This attack was “the most significant in terms of civilian victims,” said Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko on Saturday, who declared a “day of mourning” for the 1er January.
Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat called it the “most massive missile attack” of the conflict, excluding the first days of the war.
Aid running out of steam
Friday’s Russian strikes drew strong international condemnation, with the UN secretary-general speaking out against “appalling attacks”.
These attacks end a difficult year for Ukraine, marked by the failure of its summer counter-offensive and a revival of Moscow’s forces, who this week claimed the capture of the town of Marinka on the eastern front.
This news is all the more worrying for Kyiv as Western aid is starting to run out of steam, in Europe as well as in the United States, raising the risk of a drying up of the flow of munitions and funds.
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky launched a new appeal to his allies, assuring that arming Ukraine is “a way to protect lives”.
“Each manifestation of Russian terror proves that we cannot wait to provide assistance to those who are fighting,” he pleaded.
Words which echo those of his American counterpart Joe Biden, who called on his country’s elected officials to “act without further delay” to bring help to Kyiv.
Washington has just released a new tranche of $250 million, the last without a new vote in Congress, which is refusing for the moment to allocate more aid.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed a new EU aid package, a problem that Europeans hope to resolve at a summit in early February 2024.
Poland, a NATO member country, denounced on Friday a “violation” of its airspace “by a cruise missile”, calling on Russia to “immediately cease this type of operation”.
In November 2022, a Ukrainian missile fell on the Polish village of Przewodow, near Ukraine, killing two civilians and briefly sparking fears of an extension of the conflict.