Ukraine attacking border regions, claims Russia
KYIV: Russia’s southern Belgorod region bordering Ukraine came under attack from Ukrainian artillery fire, mortar shells and drones Friday, authorities said, hours after two drones struck a Russian city in a region next to the annexed Crimea Peninsula.
The Kremlin’s forces, meanwhile, struck a clinic in Dnipro, in central Ukraine, killing two people and wounding another 23, including two children, Ukrainian officials said. Also, a Russian S-300 missile hit a dam in the Karlivka district of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, placing nearby settlements under threat of severe flooding.
The Belgorod town of Graivoron, about seven kilometres from the Ukrainian border, was under fire for several hours, with four houses, a store, a car, a gas pipeline and a power line damaged, Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov reported. Closer to the border, a recreation centre, a shop and an uninhabited house sustained damage in the village of Glotovo. One woman was wounded when the nearby village of Novaya Tavolzhanka was shelled.
Earlier this week, the Belgorod region was the target of one of the most serious cross-border attacks from Ukraine since the war began 15 months ago. Details of the raid were murky. Russia blamed the Ukrainian armed forces, but two Russian groups said they were involved, with the aim of bringing down Russian President Putin.
Officials in Russia’s city of Krasnodar, in the region of the same name bordering Crimea, said that two drones struck there. Witnesses told local media they heard something like the sound of a moped and then two explosions. The blasts smashed a hole in the roof of a building and blew out windows in an apartment building. “We just went to bed and then there was such a strong terrible boom,” resident Tatiana Safonova said.