Russia pounded the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with missiles and drones in the hours leading into New Year’s Eve, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow accused Kyiv of carrying out a deadly air assault just across the border on nearby Belgorod.
At least six missiles hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s national police said on Sunday, injuring at least 22 people and hitting 12 apartment buildings, 13 residential houses and a kindergarten.
Earlier, Ukrainian officials said that among those injured in Kharkiv were two boys aged 14 and 16 and a security adviser for a team of German journalists.
Closer to midnight, as part of a wider bombardment of Ukraine that also targeted Kyiv, several waves of Russian drones hit residential buildings in Kharkiv’s centre, leading to fires, the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, said.
“On the eve of the New Year, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared – we are unbreakable and invincible,” said the mayor, Ihor Terekhov.
A day earlier, Ukraine carried out strikes on the Russian border city of Belgorod. That came one day after an 18-hour aerial barrage across Ukraine killed at least 41 civilians.
Russian officials said the explosions in the centre of Belgorod on Saturday killed 21 people, including three children, and injured 110 more.
The Guardian could not independently confirm the death toll. If the numbers were correct, the strike would be one of the deadliest on Russia during the war so far.
A Ukrainian security source, though, told the BBC that the casualties in Belgorod were the result of “incompetent work of Russian air defence”, suggesting debris from failed Russian interceptors fell on the city. The Guardian could not independently verify the claim.
Footage of Belgorod published on Russian social media showed burning cars and black smoke rising from damaged buildings. One strike allegedly hit close to a central ice rink.
Belgorod is just over half an hour’s drive from the border with Ukraine, making it a vital stop on Russian supply lines. The city has come under extensive shelling and drone attacks for months.
Russian officials also said a man died and four other people were injured when a missile struck a private home in the Belgorod region late on Friday evening and a nine-year-old was killed in a separate incident in the Bryansk region.
The Kremlin said that Vladimir Putin had been briefed about the strike on Belgorod. Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian president had instructed the minister of health to travel to Belgorod.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed in a statement that Kyiv used Ukrainian Olkha and Czech-made Vampire rockets fitted with cluster-munition warheads. “This crime will not go unpunished,” the defence ministry said.
Ukraine’s allies countered that responsibility ultimately lay with Vladimir Putin for invading Russia’s neighbour two years ago.
“If Russia wants someone to blame for the deaths of Russians in this war, it should start with President Putin,” said Thomas Phipps, Britain’s envoy to the UN.
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Ukraine did not officially acknowledge launching any strikes on Saturday and rarely comments on attacks on Russian territory.
Ukrainian media – citing law enforcement agencies – claimed that the attacks only hit military targets and were retaliation for Friday’s mass bombardment of Ukrainian cities, described by Ukrainian officials as Russia’s biggest air attack on the country so far.
The strikes on Ukraine on Friday confirmed fears long held in Kyiv and the west that Moscow was building up a large missile stockpile that it was planning to use this winter to target the country’s energy system.
On Friday evening, an emergency meeting of the UN security council condemned Russia’s latest mass-bombing campaign in Ukraine.
“Once again, Ukrainians are forced to spend the holidays seeking shelter, clearing the rubble and burying the dead, amidst freezing temperatures,” UN assistant secretary-general Khaled Khiari said after briefing the council on the attacks.
Russia’s aerial attacks have also sparked concern for Ukraine’s direct neighbours.
Poland’s defence forces said on Friday that an unknown object had entered the country’s airspace before vanishing off radars, and that all indications pointed to it being a Russian missile.
Speaking to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti on Saturday, Russia’s charge d’affaires in Poland, Andrei Ordash, said that Moscow would not comment on the event until Warsaw had given the Kremlin evidence of an airspace violation.
“Until concrete evidence is presented, we will not give any explanations, because these accusations are unsubstantiated,” he said.
Associated Press contributed to this report
