Strikes intensify between Russia, Ukraine

MOSCOW/KYIV — Russia and Ukraine have seen an escalation in strikes in recent days, including an unprecedented attack on the Russian city of Belgorod that killed 24 people on Saturday, and an attack on Odesa port infrastructure on Monday, with both sides accusing each other of New Year’s Day attacks.

Thirteen people were injured in “heavy shelling” by Ukrainian forces at the center of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, the head of the broader Donetsk region of which the Donetsk city is the administrative center, wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Monday.

Ukrainian officials said Russia’s air attacks on several Ukrainian regions killed at least one person. At least one person was killed and nine injured in a drone attack in the southern port of Odesa, Oleh Kiper, governor of the Odesa region, said on Telegram.

Kiper said that falling debris from drones that were shot down caused several fires in residential buildings in different parts of the city.

Officials in Ukraine’s western region of Lviv, which borders Poland, said that an early New Year’s Day Russian air attack damaged a university building in the city of Dubliany and damaged the monument to a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the 1940s on the outskirts of the city of Lviv.

The fresh strikes came a day after the deadliest attack on civilians in Russia since the start of the conflict in February 2022.

The official death toll has risen to 24 with 108 wounded in Belgorod, just 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

Moscow said the Belgorod attack had included the use of controversial cluster munitions, and told an emergency meeting at the UN Security Council that Kyiv had targeted a sports center, an ice rink and a university.

‘Deliberate move’

Russian envoy Vasily Nebenzya called it a “deliberate, indiscriminate attack against a civilian target”.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered the New Year address on Sunday, calling for national unity.

“We have proved time and time again that we can solve even the most difficult problems, and we will never back down, because there is no force that can divide us, make us forget the memory and faith of our fathers, or stop our development,” he said.

The president also wished Russian families all the best. “We are one country, one big family,” he said.

“We will ensure the confident development of the fatherland, the well-being of our citizens, and we will become even stronger,” said Putin.

In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed in his New Year’s address to wreak “wrath” against Russian forces in 2024.