BELGOROD, Russia: Six people including a one-year-old girl were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack on Thursday on the southern Russian city of Belgorod, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Seventeen other people, including four children, were hospitalized with injuries, with six in serious condition, Gladkov said, adding that two children had already been released for outpatient treatment. He said the one-year-old child’s name was Valentina.
“We are all grieving with the families and friends of the victims,” Gladkov wrote on Telegram. “I want to express my sincere condolences, realizing that there are no words that can comfort this grief.”
Belgorod is the nearest major Russian city to the border with Ukraine, and the city and surrounding region have come under frequent attack since February 2022 when Russia sent forces into Ukraine in what it calls a “special military operation.”
Russian authorities said 25 civilians were killed in the largest of these attacks at the end of December.
The Russian health ministry said it had despatched a team of medical specialists from federal centers to Belgorod.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the events an “act of terrorism by the Kyiv regime” on Telegram and said Russia would take the case to the UN Security Council.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv on the attacks.
The Russian defense ministry said its air defense systems had shot down 14 Ukrainian missiles over the Belgorod region. Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
The governor of the neighboring Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said a shopping mall, an outdoor sports facility and residential areas were hit. “The enemy is deliberately hitting a cluster of civilians,” he said.
Video posted by Russian media showed Gladkov arriving at a store called Magnit, which had nearly all its windows shattered. Additional footage showed apartment complexes with blown-out windows and emergency workers running to aid injured people at an outdoor sports complex.
Six killed in Ukrainian missile strike on Russia’s Belgorod — governor
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Six killed in Ukrainian missile strike on Russia’s Belgorod — governor
- Seventeen other people, including four children, were hospitalized with injuries, with six in serious condition, Gladkov said
- “We are all grieving with the families and friends of the victims”
Russia puts death toll from Ukrainian strike on occupied village at 27. Kyiv rejects accusation
- Russia’s accusations against Ukraine come amid a US-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine
Russian authorities said Friday that the death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike they said struck a café in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine’s Kherson region rose to 27 people. Kyiv denied attacking civilian targets.
Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman of Russia’s main criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, said in a statement that a Ukrainian drone strike on a café and hotel in the village of Khorly, where at least 100 civilians were celebrating New Year’s Eve overnight into Thursday, killed 27 people, including two minors. A total of 31, including five minors, were hospitalized with injuries.
A criminal probe on the charges of carrying out an act of terrorism has been opened, Petrenko said.
Kyiv denied attacking civilians. Spokesman of Ukraine’s General Staff, Dmytro Lykhovii, told Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that Ukrainian forces “adhere to the norms of international humanitarian law” and “carry out strikes exclusively against Russian military targets, facilities of the Russian fuel and energy sector, and other lawful targets.”
Lykhovii said that General Staff has published an explicit list of targets that the Ukrainian army struck on the night of New Year’s Eve. The list did not include strikes on occupied parts of the Kherson region.
Lykhovii noted that Russia has repeatedly used disinformation and false statements to disrupt the ongoing peace negotiations.
The Associated Press could not independently verify claims made about the attack.
Russia’s accusations against Ukraine come amid a US-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Moscow alleged that Kyiv launched a long-range drone attack against a residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in northwestern Russia overnight from Sunday to Monday.
Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin’s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have ramped up in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.
In his New Year’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a peace deal was “90 percent ready” but warned that the remaining 10 percent, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live.”
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine “to discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia conducted what local authorities called “one of the most massive” drone attacks at Zaporizhzhia overnight.
At least nine Russian drones struck the city, damaging dozens of residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure, head of the regional administration, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram on Friday. There were no casualties, the official said.
Overall, Russia fired 116 long-range drones at Ukraine last night, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said that 86 drones were intercepted, while 27 more have reached their targets.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Friday that its air defenses intercepted 64 Ukrainian drones overnight over multiple Russian regions.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, on Friday also accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out a missile strike on the city of Belgorod. Two women were hospitalized with injuries, Gladkov said. The strike shattered windows in multiple residential buildings and damaged an unspecified “commercial” facility and a number of cars, according to the official.
