Moscow accuses Ukraine of shelling Russian border city after aerial assault

Officials in Moscow have accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the Russian border city of Belgorod, a day after an 18-hour aerial Russian barrage across Ukraine killed at least 39 civilians.

Two children were killed in Belgorod, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement. He added that an unspecified number of people were injured.

While previous attacks on the region have generally taken place at night, images on social media showed flames in broad daylight in what appeared to be the heart of the city, with cars on fire and plumes of black smoke rising among damaged buildings.

Air raid sirens sounded across the city, state media reported.

Earlier on Saturday, Moscow officials had reported shooting down 32 Ukrainian drones over the country’s Moscow, Bryansk, Oryol and Kursk regions.

They also reported that cross-border shelling had killed two people in Russia. A man died and four other people were injured when a missile struck a home in the Belgorod region late on Friday evening, and a nine-year-old was killed in the Bryansk region.

Cities across western Russia have come under regular attack from drones since May, with Russian officials blaming Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for attacks on Russian territory or the Crimean peninsula, but larger aerial strikes against Russia have previously followed heavy assaults on Ukrainian cities.

Russian drone strikes against Ukraine continued on Saturday, with the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reporting that 10 Shahed drones had been shot down across the Kherson, Khmelnytskyi and Mykolaiv regions.

On Friday, Moscow’s forces launched 122 missiles and dozens of drones across Ukraine, an onslaught described by one air force official as the biggest aerial barrage of the war.

As well as the 39 deaths, at least 160 people were wounded and an unknown number were buried under rubble in the assault, which damaged a maternity hospital, apartment blocks and schools.

Western officials and analysts recently warned that Russia had limited its cruise missile strikes for months in an apparent effort to build up stockpiles for massive strikes during the winter, hoping to break the Ukrainians’ spirit.

Fighting along the front line is largely bogged down by winter weather after Ukraine’s summer counter-offensive failed to make a significant breakthrough along the 620-mile line of contact.

Russia’s aerial attacks have also sparked concern for Ukraine’s neighbours.

Poland’s defence forces said on Friday that an unknown object had entered the country’s air space before vanishing from radars, and that all indications pointed to it being a Russian missile.

Speaking to Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti Saturday, Russian diplomat Andrei Ordash said: “We will not give any explanations until we are presented with concrete evidence because these accusations are unsubstantiated.”