Dramatic footage appears to show the Russian city of Belgorod in the aftermath of a Ukrainian attack over the border that prompted acerbic Russian criticism of the U.S. and spiraling retaliatory strikes.
Photographs posted to social media by Russian independent outlet, ASTRA, appear to show smoke rising from Belgorod, the border city close to Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv.
On Saturday, Russia accused Ukraine of an “indiscriminate combined strike” on the city of Belgorod using missiles equipped with cluster munitions and Czech-made rockets fired by multiple launch systems. Belgorod’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Sunday that 24 people had been killed, with 108 people injured.
A Ukrainian security source told the BBC that more than 70 drones were launched in “response to Russia’s terrorist attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilians,” and that Kyiv had only targeted military infrastructure. The source said that the “incompetent work of Russian air defense” and falling fragments were to blame for civilian casualties.
On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the Kremlin had launched its most intensive strikes of the more than 22-month-old war. Close to 160 missiles and strike drones were launched at Ukraine in the barrage, he said. Zelensky announced on Saturday that 39 people had died and 159 people had been injured in the hit on “almost 120 cities and villages.”
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Moscow called a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Saturday, adding it had requested that the Czech Republic’s representative attend in New York to “explain this country’s ammunition is being used for killing civilians in Belgorod.”
Czech Foreign Minister, Jan Lipavský, said Prague would not “be summoned anywhere by Russia,” adding its representatives would attend a Security Council meeting “when Russia wants to discuss the withdrawal of its occupying troops” from Ukraine. Newsweek could not independently verify whether Czech equipment was used in Ukraine’s strike.
Russia’s government said, “British and American consultants were directly involved in organizing this terrorist attack,” accusing Washington and London of “regularly inciting the authorities of what is now Ukraine to commit bloody crimes.”
“Responsibility for it also lies with the countries of the European Union,” Moscow added.
“Russia-U.S. relations have become strained to the maximum due to Washington’s strategic objective of inflicting a decisive blow on Russia,” the Kremlin’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russia’s RIA Novosti state-run news agency on Sunday.
“If the United States does not take any extraordinary steps to exert pressure through other means, Russia will not be the first to deploy missiles that were previously prohibited under the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty,” Lavrov said, referring to a Soviet-era agreement that limits stockpiles of such weapons from which the U.S. withdrew in 2019.
On Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had retaliated with strikes on Ukraine, hitting “decision-making centers and military facilities” in Kharkiv. Moscow said its missiles killed members of Kyiv’s intelligence services and its military who “were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist attack in Belgorod.”
Russia launched several waves of attacks from Saturday evening into the early hours of Sunday, Kharkiv’s regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said in a post to social media.
Moscow fired “at least six rockets” at Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, between 7 p.m. and 7:20 p.m. local time on Saturday, Syniehubov said. The attacks damaged several residential and medical buildings, injuring 28 civilians, he added.
Russia then attacked Kharkiv with Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones and targeted more than 15 settlements in the Kharkiv region with artillery and mortars, Syniehubov said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 49 Shahed kamikaze drones across the country, with six S-300 anti-aircraft missiles fired on Kharkiv. Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted 21 of the strike drones, Kyiv said.
“On the eve of the new year, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared,” said Kharkiv mayor, Ihor Terekhov.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.