Updated 00:33 | Published 00:19
Residents of the border region of Belgorod woke up to explosions and broken glass.
At the same time, several other Russian cities have been attacked with drones.
– The situation is quite worrying, says Kremlin spokesman Dimitriy Peskov.
Eight apartment buildings, several villas and two government buildings are said to have been damaged in Belgorod early Wednesday after “massive” artillery shelling.
– I woke up to explosions and the sound of broken glass. My husband and I threw ourselves out of bed and ran into the bathroom, a woman in Belgorod told Russian Izvestia according to CNN.
Evacuate children
One person is said to have died in an attack on the region on Tuesday evening.
According to the authorities in Belgorod, children have begun to be evacuated from villages closest to the Ukrainian border, where the shelling has been most intense.
Around the same time on Wednesday morning, an oil refinery in the Krasnodar region started burning after a drone struck.
During Wednesday, about ten drones were also sent against targets in Bryansk. According to Russian state media, all of them must have been shot down or disrupted.
The new attacks take place only a day after eight drones were shot down over Moscow.
In the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, the war has come closer to the Russian population.
Kremlin “takes action”
And the attacks may increase in scope.
– Of course we like to watch and believe in more attacks, said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak after the drone attack on Moscow.
Putin’s regime is now “taking action” after the attacks on Belgorod – where earlier two Russian guerrilla groups fighting on the Ukrainian side crossed the border and created chaos for a few hours last week.
– We are concerned about this situation. Shelling of civilians continues in Belgorod. It is a rather worrying situation, said Kremlin spokesman Dimitriy Peskov, according to the Russian state-controlled news agency Paw.
According to Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod, the region was shelled by Ukrainian artillery 260 times yesterday.
“Tiring and ridiculous”
Peskov thinks that Russia should get the world’s sympathies for what is happening in the border region.
– We have not heard a word of condemnation from any country in the West, he says.
And those words don’t seem imminent.
– The argument that “Russia is the victim” is so tiresome and ridiculous that even the Russian people have to see it for what it is – an overused and desperate claim by the Kremlin to try to explain their series of strategic mistakes that reduced Russia’s once proud global reputation, British government military adviser Ian Stubbs said Wednesday during a speech in Vienna, writes CNN.