Wave of drone and missile strikes that wounded dozens was retaliation for ‘terrorist attack’, says Moscow
Moscow has said the wave of drone and missile strikes that wounded at least 28 people in Ukraine’s second-biggest city late on Saturday was launched in retaliation for the “terrorist attack” on the Russian border city of Belgorod earlier the same day that reportedly killed 24 people.
Ukraine’s national police said on Sunday that at least six Russian missiles had reached Kharkiv on Saturday night, injuring more than two dozen people and hitting 12 apartment buildings, 13 residential houses, a hotel and a kindergarten.
The country’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said a British journalist was among those wounded, while the German public broadcaster ZDF said on Sunday that one of its television crews had been in the Kharkiv Palace hotel when it was hit. A Ukrainian translator had been hit by debris and seriously wounded, with one of the team’s security guards also sustaining injuries, ZDF said in a statement.
The missile strikes, which came as Kharkiv prepared for new year celebrations, were followed by waves of drone attacks on housing blocks. On Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said it had destroyed 21 of 49 Iranian-made Shahed drones that Russia had used to target “the frontline of defence, as well as at civilian, military and infrastructure facilities in the frontline territories”.
In a statement on Sunday, Russia said it had attacked military facilities in Kharkiv overnight – including a hotel housing military commanders and “foreign mercenaries” – in response to Ukraine’s strikes on Belgorod on Saturday.
Kyiv, however, denied the claims. Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for the GUR military intelligence agency, said the statements from Russia were “yet another delusional fantasy from the terrorist regime waging a genocidal war against Ukraine”, Euromaidan News reported.
