For the first time since the start of the conflict, Ukrainian strikes reached the center of a Russian city. Yesterday, Saturday in Belgorod, the authorities counted 22 dead, including three children, and around 110 injured. Russian bombings in Ukraine killed 40 people on Friday, including 17 in the capital kyiv, according to authorities. This Sunday, Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky are both due to deliver New Year’s speeches as the strikes continue.
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Russia launched new attacks against Ukraine this Sunday, December 31, at dawn, the day after the strike attributed to kyiv on the Russian city of Belgorod. Explosions rang out in several Ukrainian cities, including kyiv, Kharkov and Zaporizhia. Four Iranian-made Shahed drones targeted the city of Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, during the night, according to the spokesperson for the regional prosecutor, Dmytro Tchoubenko.
After the Saturday strikes on the Russian border town of Belgorodthe reaction of the Russian authorities took place, as is often the case, in several stages, reports our correspondent in Moscow, Jean-Didier Revoin. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced a “terrorist act” on the part of kyiv, describing the modus operandi of the Ukrainian authorities with the same term. The Kremlin said that Vladimir Putin had dispatched teams from the Ministry of Emergency Situations to this Ukrainian border town to help the victims. The Ministry of Defense, for its part, announced that this attack would not go unpunished, suggesting a reaction which, for the moment, has not yet taken place on a massive scale.
And finally, at the international level, Moscow called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to deal with this attack.
Read alsoAt the UN, Russia accuses Ukraine of committing an act of “deliberate terrorism” in Belgorod
Russia called this emergency meeting to allow the members of the Security Council to do their duty and objectively assess what happened. At least that is the official explanation, while the Foreign Ministry says that London and Washington are inciting kyiv to carry out this type of attack given the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive. It can be concluded that neither Moscow nor kyiv intends to negotiate anything. And that the escalation will continue.
In Ukraine, no reaction at the highest level of state
In kyiv, Ukrainians are wary of the content of the Russian story, explains our correspondent Stéphane Siohan. On New Year’s Eve, and the day after a grueling day (Friday) of bombingthe news of missiles falling on Belgorod did not make headlines in Ukraine, although the information provoked a number of comments on social networks, essentially believing that war always comes home, it is to say to the one who started it…
Saturday evening, the most read article on the news site Ukrainska Pravda is dedicated to the explosions in the center of Belgorod; he cites sources within the Ukrainian forces, who state that yes, Ukraine is indeed targeting a certain number of targets, particularly military ones, on the territory of the Russian Federation, but that in this specific case, the explosions of Belgorod would be the result of a “ non-professional use » of anti-aircraft defense…
There is an opinion in Ukraine that Russia may have provoked this incident itself, so that it could convene the UN Security Council, and look away from what it committed in Ukraine on Friday. But as a famous Kiev columnist, himself of Russian origin, declared on Saturday, it was Putin who started the war, so all the victims, including those in Belgorod, weigh on his conscience and that of his subjects…