To many Ukrainians, the strikes bring home to Russia the kind of suffering that they have endured almost daily for nearly two years; to many pro-war Russians, they are evidence that Moscow must use even more aggressive tactics in Ukraine.
The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry posted a video of the aftermath of the bombardment that showed cars on fire, injured people being carried to shelter and broken glass on the city’s buildings.
Russian state television broadcast videos posted by residents of Belgorod that showed plumes of smoke over the city, shattered glass near residential buildings and people lying on pavements – in a striking echo of scenes that unfolded a day before in Ukrainian cities such as Kyiv, Lviv and Dnipro.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, said that three children were among those killed and that a residential area in the city centre had been hit.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that an emergency UN Security Council meeting would be convened to discuss the attack. On Friday, the same council met to address Russia’s assault against Ukrainian cities, with the United States, France and Britain strongly condemning the attack.
Ukraine has said several times that it does not fear taking the war to Russian territory, and it has previously targeted the Belgorod region with cross-border strikes and even brief ground assaults by Kyiv-backed, anti-Kremlin Russian fighters.
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So far, such attacks have resulted in at least 50 deaths inside Russia, according to the United Nations, as well as the evacuation of a few thousand civilians and minor clashes with the Russian military.
The strike on Belgorod was in response to Russia’s air assault against Ukraine a day earlier, said an official from Ukraine’s intelligence services, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, adding that only military facilities had been targeted. The assault on Ukraine – one of the largest of the war – killed at least 39 people, wounded about 160 others and hit civilian and military infrastructure.
On Sunday morning (AEDT), Ukrainian authorities said, Russia launched an assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, in what appeared to be Russia’s own response to the Ukrainian attack.
Ukrainian prosecutors in the Kharkiv region said that Russian missiles fired from the Belgorod region targeted the eastern Ukrainian city and that at least 21 people had been injured in the attack. Local authorities added that the Russian military struck the city centre six times and reported damage to residential buildings, shops and a medical facility.
Unverified videos and images shared on social media also showed that the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, one of the city’s most popular hotels and a frequent venue for foreign journalists, was hit. Photos of the aftermath of the attack showed the facade of the building pierced by a huge hole the size of several stories.
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The back-to-back air assaults come as Ukrainian and Russian troops are bogged down on land in bloody and mostly inconclusive fighting. Moscow has made several advances along the front in recent weeks, but military experts say its gains are incremental and unlikely to lead to a major breakthrough in the near future.