Russia claimed on Tuesday (Jan 2) that Ukrainian strikes on the border Belgorod region killed at least one person and wounded five.
On social media, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said: “There is one victim: a man who was driving in a car when a shell exploded nearby.” Gladkov added that four people were wounded near a car garage and one woman was wounded when debris fell on the bus she was in.
On the same day, Russia pounded Ukraine’s two biggest cities in a new wave of heavy air strikes, which killed at least five civilians.
Ukrainian officials claimed that the missile and drone attacks on the capital of Kyiv and the northeastern city of Kharkiv also wounded dozens of people, and caused widespread damage. The power supplies were also destroyed.
The Russia-Ukraine war remained a stalemate the entire year with the world’s concentration getting diverted to the conflict in West Asia, but in the last few days, Russia intensified its attacks, with President Vladimir Putin warning on Monday that a Ukrainian air strike on the Russian city of Belgorod recently, which Moscow said killed 25 civilians, would “not go unpunished”.
In the latest development, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that an elderly woman had been killed and 49 people hurt in Kyiv. He stated that smoke was seen coming out of the charred side of a high-rise residential building. Emergency services later recovered another corpse from the building.
Local officials said that a 91-year-old woman was killed in a missile strike on Kharkiv. A married couple was killed in an attack in the area around Kyiv.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on the Telegram that “Russia will answer for every life (that it has) taken away”.
Watch: Ukraine pounded with missiles and drones, as Putin vows revenge
Russian strikes on Ukraine
Russia stepped up missile and drone strikes. It launched one of its largest air attacks of the war on December 29 when killed at least 39 people. Kyiv had warned for weeks that Russia appeared to be stockpiling missiles for big attacks.
Meanwhile, Zelensky said that the Russian forces are suffering heavy losses and the notion that Moscow is winning the nearly two-year-old war is only a “feeling” not based on reality.
“Thousands, thousands of killed Russian soldiers, nobody even took them away,” he told The Economist magazine in an interview published on Monday. As per the report, he was referring to fighting around the besieged eastern town of Avdiivka which he visited last week.
Disclaimer: A number of claims and counterclaims are being made on Ukraine-Russia war on the ground and online. While WION takes utmost care to accurately and responsibly report ongoing developments, we cannot independently verify the authenticity of all statements, photos and videos
(With inputs from agencies)
