Putin launches fresh drone strikes on Ukraine as revenge for border city attack

Police escort an injured woman following a Russian missile strike on a residential building in downtown Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine (Picture: EPA)

Vladimir Putin pounded Ukraine’s biggest cities in the hours leading into New Year’s Eve, after Russia accused Volodymyr Zelensky of shelling the border region of Belgorod.

Dozens of people have been killed in both countries in the last 24 hours and more than 100 wounded.

Most attacks in Ukraine were concentrated on the south and east, but explosions were also reported in Kyiv.

Russia said this was retaliation against strikes on Belgorod, a city located about 35 miles from the border, on Saturday, which killed at least 24 people.

A medical worker helps a wounded resident near his apartment building in central Kharkiv, Ukraine (Picture: Reuters)

The regional governor said three children were among the dead in what was one of the deadliest attacks on Russia since Putin launched the invasion.

Just hours later air raid alerts sounded across Ukraine, urging people to run to a shelter.

At least six missiles hit Kharkiv, injuring at least 28 people and hitting residential buildings, hotels and medical facilities, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said today.

Earlier, Ukrainian officials said that two boys aged 14 and 16 and a security adviser for a team of German journalists were among those injured in the city.

A view shows the Kharkiv Palace Hotel heavily damaged (Picture: Reuters)

Ukrainian rescuers search for survivors in an office building (Picture: EPA)

Closer to midnight, as part of a wider bombardment of Ukraine that also targeted Kyiv, several waves of drones hit residential buildings in the centre.

‘On the eve of the New Year, the Russians want to intimidate our city, but we are not scared – we are unbreakable and invincible!’ mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Images from Kharkiv showed several decimated buildings, including a hotel with entire floors blown out.

Ukraine’s air force said the military had shot down 21 out of 49 drones launched overnight by Russia.

Rescuers carry a wounded person after Ukraine shelled the city of Belgorod, in Russia (Picture: AP)

Firefighters extinguish burning cars after shelling in Belgorod (Picture: AP)

Most were aimed at the front line and parts of the Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, it said.

In a separate attack, three people were killed when Russian forces shelled a village in the Kharkiv region near the front line.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, chairperson of Ukraine’s parliament, reacted to the scenes of destruction in Kharkiv: ‘Mad Russian terrorists attacked a peaceful city.

‘Apartment and private houses, hospitals, a hotel, a kindergarten – these are the buildings damaged by the attack. None of these buildings are military facilities.

An injured elderly woman being escorted following a Russian missile strike on her residential building in downtown Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine (Picture: EPA)

The damaged Palace hotel (Picture: AFP)

‘Neither are the civilians who suffered as a result of the attack.’

Meanwhile, Russia blasted Ukraine’s air attack on Belgorod as ‘indiscriminate’, but a Ukrainian security source told the BBC that only military infrastructure had been targeted.

But pictures from the city show blown out residential buildings and charred cars in the middle of the street.

Russian newspaper Kommersant cited a source close to the Russian Investigative Committee as saying that Ukraine launched its attack from a multiple rocket launcher in the Kharkiv region.

Both sides have increased shelling in the last week of 2023, with Russia killing at least 31 civilians in its biggest air assault of the 22-month war on Ukraine on Friday.

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