Moscow accused the Ukrainian army of an attack that killed 21 people, including two children, and wounded 111 in Belgorod, a Russian city near the border, on Saturday, a day after massive attacks in Ukraine killed 39 people.
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“According to latest information, twelve adults and two children died in Belgorod,” the Russian Emergencies Ministry said on Telegram, adding that “108 people, including fifteen children, were injured.”
Images posted online show burning cars, buildings with broken windows and columns of black smoke rising from some buildings.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was “informed” about this attack on “residential areas” of the city, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian authorities.
Photo from Portal
Ukraine regularly carries out attacks in Russia, particularly in the regions closest to its territory, but whose casualties are generally lower.
Kiev has not yet responded to the Russian allegations.
Earlier, the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported the deaths of two children in a Ukrainian strike in the regional capital.
Authorities did not say whether these casualties were included in the casualty count reported by the ministry or whether they were separate strikes.
For his part, the governor of the Russian border region of Bryansk, Alexandre Bogomaz, claimed that “a child born in 2014” had been killed in a Ukrainian attack.
Ukraine was still counting its dead on Saturday after Russia carried out heavy attacks a day earlier on several cities, including the capital Kiev, killing 39 people and wounding dozens more.
The wave of attacks, one of the most violent since the start of the war almost two years ago, was directed against buildings, a maternity ward and even a shopping center, but also against industrial and military infrastructure.
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“Unfortunately, there are currently 39 deaths 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.
According to the local administration, at least 16 people died in Kiev alone on Friday.
Bodies continued to be recovered from the rubble on Saturday in this city where deadly attacks have become rarer in recent months.
This attack was “the most significant in terms of the number of civilian casualties,” Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Saturday, declaring January 1 a “day of mourning”.
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Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat called it the “biggest missile attack” of the conflict, excluding the early days of the war.
Friday's Russian attacks drew strong international condemnation, with the UN Secretary-General speaking out against “horrific attacks”.
The attacks end a difficult year for Ukraine, marked by the failure of its summer counteroffensive and a resurgence of Moscow forces that this week claimed the capture of the eastern front town of Marinka.
This news is all the more worrying for Kiev as Western aid in both Europe and the United States is gradually losing steam and the risk of the flow of ammunition and money drying up is increasing.
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky made a new appeal to his allies, asserting that arming Ukraine was “a way to protect lives.”
“Every manifestation of Russian terror proves that we cannot wait to provide assistance to those fighting,” he argued.
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Words similar to those of his American counterpart Joe Biden, who called on his country's elected officials to “act without further delay” to help Kyiv.
Washington has just released a new tranche of $250 million, the latest without a new vote in Congress, which is refusing for now to provide further aid.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed a new EU aid package, an issue that Europeans want to resolve at a summit in early February 2024.
Poland, a NATO member country, on Friday denounced a “violation” of its airspace “by a cruise missile” and called on Russia to “immediately stop this type of operation.”
In November 2022, a Ukrainian missile struck the Polish village of Przewodow near Ukraine, killing two civilians and briefly sparking fears of an expansion of the conflict.
Russia calls for a UN Security Council meeting
Russia said it had requested a UN Security Council meeting following Saturday's attack in Belgorod that killed at least 21 people and for which it blamed Ukraine.
“We have requested a meeting of the Security Council in Belgorod at 3:00 p.m. New York time,” or 8:00 p.m. GMT, Russian deputy ambassador to the United Nations Dmitri Polianski said in Telegram.