Russia crushes eastern Ukrainian city ahead of New Year

Russia bombarded the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with missiles and drones in the hours leading up to New Year’s Eve, in retaliation for an alleged deadly Ukrainian airstrike on the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday.

Residents of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, located just 90 kilometers across the border from Belgorod, were startled by multiple air raid sirens overnight as several waves of ballistic missiles and attack drones rained down on the city center, injuring nearly thirty people and private life was damaged. homes, hospitals and a hotel, according to Ukrainian officials.

“These are not military facilities, but cafes, residential buildings and offices,” said Ihor Terekhov, the mayor of Kharkov. a message on social media including a video of firefighters trying to extinguish a fire amid a pile of rubble.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement that the attacks on Kharkiv “hit decision-making centers and military facilities,” claiming, for example, that the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, which was hit by a missile, housed members of the Ukrainian armed forces and intelligence services. The strike left a hole spanning several floors in the hotel’s facade.

The hotel is one of the best known in Kharkiv and foreign journalists often stayed there. The attack appeared to be the latest in a series of Russian missile attacks on locations popular with reporters. Last summer, Russian missiles struck a well-known restaurant and hotel in the eastern cities of Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk.

The airstrikes in Ukraine and Russia last weekend capped a week of intensive attacks by both sides on land, sea and air, signaling that neither Kiev nor Moscow intends to de-escalate the war. In recent days, Ukraine hit a Russian warship and said it shot down five fighter jets, while Russian forces made small advances along the entire front line.

“For all the strikes in Odessa, the Sumy region, Kiev and all our other cities and regions,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine he said in his late-night speech on Saturday“There will be fair accountability for the terrorist state. Both politically and very practically.”

The recent flare-up of the war began on Friday, when Russia bombarded Ukraine with a massive and deadly airstrike that breached air defenses and wreaked havoc in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. It was according to Mayor Vitali Klitschkothe deadliest attack on the city’s civilian population since the war began almost two years ago.

Officials in Kiev said overnight rescue teams had found more bodies in the rubble, bringing the death toll in Friday’s attack on the capital to 23. They declared January 1 a day of mourning.

In total, Friday’s attacks on Ukraine killed about 40 people, injured about 160 others and hit critical industrial and military infrastructure, as well as civilian buildings such as hospitals and schools.

In response to the bombing, Ukraine launched the attack on Belgorod, killing at least 22 people and wounding nearly 110 others, according to Russian officials. It appeared to be the deadliest attack on Russian territory since President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Videos of the aftermath of the Belgorod bombing showed people lying on sidewalks, cars on fire and shattered glass strewn at the foot of damaged buildings – a striking echo of the kind of scenes regularly seen in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government did not publicly comment on the airstrike on Saturday, as is customary for attacks on Russian territory. But a Ukrainian intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, said the attack was in response to Friday’s Russian attack. He added that only military facilities were targeted and suggested that civilians had been killed by debris from downed Ukrainian missiles.

Russia said on Saturday that the attack on Belgorod “would not go unpunished.”

It took only a few hours for Moscow to strike back and target nearby Kharkov, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Ukrainian officials said this They turned out to be Iskander short-range ballistic missiles. Kharkiv is so close to the border with Russia that air raid sirens often do not have time to sound before rockets hit.

The The Ukrainian Air Force said this that Russia had also launched around fifty attack drones against Ukraine overnight, most of which targeted frontline areas. It added that it had shot less than half of them, indicating that many had hit their targets. The That’s what the Ukrainian police said that two people had been killed by Russian shelling in Borova, a village on the eastern front.

On Saturday evening, devastating scenes emerged from the aftermath of the attack on Kharkov. The lobby of the Kharkiv Palace Hotel was strewn with rubble from the collapsed floors, a white piano and red armchairs covered in rubble. The tables set for dinner in the hotel restaurant were swept by a gentle wind as all the windows of the restaurant were blown away.

On a nearby street, firefighters and city workers were busy clearing the streets of debris that had fallen from shattered facades, with shards of glass cracking under their feet.

“On New Year’s Eve, the Russians want to intimidate our city,” Mayor Terekhov said. said on social media. “But we will not be afraid.”

Laura Boushnak contributed reporting from Kharkiv and Vivek Shankar from Seoul.