War in Ukraine, day 684 | At least four dead in new Russian strikes

(Kyiv) At least four people were killed and dozens of others injured in Ukraine in new Russian night strikes, Ukrainian authorities announced Monday, at a time when Russia says it wants to intensify its attacks against its neighbor.

For their part, the Russian authorities announced that they had evacuated several hundred residents of Belgorod, a first in nearly two years of conflict for this large city close to Ukraine and recently the target of a series of Ukrainian bombings.

Particularly deadly strikes have increased in recent weeks on both sides of the border.

On Monday, the Ukrainian National Police announced that a “massive Russian attack” had left four people dead and 38 others injured in several regions of Ukraine.

In the center, in Kryvyï Rig, the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelensky, a missile attack caused the death of one person and injured 38 people, including two children, according to the same source.

Two people also died in Khmelnitskii, a city in the west, and missiles killed one in the Kharkiv region (North-East), law enforcement said.

They added that five people were injured in the southern town of Zaporizhia, where two buildings were damaged.

For its part, the Ukrainian army claimed the same day to have shot down 18 of the 51 missiles fired by the Russians towards “important infrastructure” or industrial and military buildings.

“A large number of ballistic missiles were launched today,” air force spokesman Yuri Ignat told Ukrainian television.

“Many say that the rate (of missiles shot down) is not very high,” he added, judging that even if the army would prefer to have “a better ratio”, it was still a question of a “good result”.

Because according to the Ukrainian army, which also says it has shot down all of the eight “Shahed” explosive drones of Iranian design launched by Russian forces in the night, “the enemy missiles that were not shot down did not all reach their target.

The fact remains that Ukraine is seeing its ammunition stocks decline as the Russian army saturates its anti-aircraft defense, a new strategy from Moscow at a time when Kyiv is worried about the erosion of Western military support.

Evacuations

On the Russian side, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced that 300 residents of Belgorod had chosen to be “temporarily evacuated” in order to be accommodated in areas further from the border.

On Friday, this official suggested to those wishing to evacuate this city, a target of intensifying Ukrainian bombings.

This unprecedented measure for a large city in Russia goes against the efforts of the Kremlin, which has always wanted to support the idea that the conflict does not directly affect the daily lives and security of Russian citizens.

This strategy, however, was shattered on December 30, when a Ukrainian attack on Belgorod left 25 dead, the heaviest civilian death toll on Russian soil since the start of Moscow’s offensive in its neighbor on February 24, 2022.

In retaliation, President Vladimir Putin promised an “intensification” of strikes on Ukraine, just over two months before the Russian presidential election after which his re-election is in no doubt.

According to Mr. Gladkov on Monday, “over the last 24 hours,” regional authorities also “received 1,300 requests” to send children from Belgorod to classes “in other regions.”

The governor thus announced that his counterparts from the Voronezh, Kaluga, Tambov and Yaroslavl regions had assured him that they would come “to the aid” of his administration.

Mr. Gladkov, however, did not say whether other voluntary evacuations of adults were in progress or planned for the near future.

When the Russian army massively struck several Ukrainian cities at the end of December and at the beginning of the year, causing several dozen deaths and injuries, the Ukrainian forces responded each time, increasing their attacks on Belgorod.

On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that a Ukrainian S-200 aerial missile had been “intercepted” at 7 a.m. (11 p.m. Eastern time Sunday) “over the Belgorod region.”

In this context, the town hall of this city had already called on the population on Friday, for the first time in two years, to secure their windows to “protect themselves” from possible shards of glass caused by the Ukrainian attacks.

A sign of growing concern in this area, the regional authorities had also announced to postpone the start of the school year in Belgorod and surrounding areas from January 9 to 19.