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Russia battered Kyiv and Kharkiv with missiles and drones overnight, killing at least two people and injuring dozens more, after President Vladimir Putin said he was “seething” at strikes on the Russian city of Belgorod that the Kremlin blames on Ukraine.
Moscow hit the capital with a combination of Iranian-made Shahed drones and “waves” of missiles for almost six hours, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration.
“As a result of such a massive missile attack in the capital, unfortunately, there is destruction of residential buildings, damage to infrastructure. There are victims,” said Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration.
The barrage came after Putin vowed to “intensify strikes” on Ukraine on Monday, in retaliation for the attack on the Russian border city of Belgorod over the weekend.
“They want to a) intimidate us and b) create instability in our country,” Putin said during a New Year’s Day visit to a military hospital, according to the Kremlin’s readout of the president’s comments. “We will intensify the strikes,” he added, saying that “no crime — and this [the attack on Belgorod] is certainly a crime against the civilian population — will go unpunished.”
Russia blames Kyiv for the air attack on Belgorod, which killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 100, according to the Kremlin.
Since Saturday, Moscow has hit Ukraine with nonstop drone and missile assaults.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one woman from Kyiv’s Solom’yans’kyi district died and dozens more were injured.
In Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv, strikes killed at least one person and damaged civilian infrastructure.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said its air defenses had shot down all 35 of the Iranian-made drones Russia launched against several cities on Tuesday. But debris from the missiles hit several civilian facilities across the area, damaging gas pipelines and cutting off water and electricity in some areas, Klitschko said.
“It’s probably the biggest attack on Kyiv & [Ukraine] as a whole since the start of full-scale invasion. Urgent action in providing additional air defense capabilities needed,” said Ukrainian MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze in a post on social media.
