Russia strikes Kharkiv hours after accusing Ukraine of shelling border city in retaliation

Twin Russian missile strikes on central KharkivSaturday injured at least 21 people, Ukrainian officials said.

The Kharkiv regional chief prosecutor said two boys aged 14 and 16 and a security adviser for a team of German journalists were among those injured. The missiles came from the direction of the Russian border city ofBelgorod, he added.

Hours earlier, Russian officials said shellingin the centre of Belgorod killed 20people, including two children, and injured 111 more.

Russian officials accused Kyiv of carrying out the attack, which took place the day after Russia unleashed its biggest air attack of the waran 18-hour aerial barrage across Ukrainethat killed at least 39 civilians.

The head of the regional police in Kharkiv, Volodymyr Tymoshenko, said preliminary evidence suggested Russia had used S-300 missiles as surface-to-surface weapons to hit Kharkiv.

One missile hit the Kharkiv Palace Hotel, and the second hit a residential building in central Kharkiv. Another three hit an industrial area but caused no damage, Tymoshenko said.

Oleh Synehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, said 10 of the victims were in hospital, and one woman was in a serious condition.

"We are fixing damage to a medical institution, multi-apartment residential buildings, shops, public places and transportation," Synehubov said.

Belgorod attacks 'will not go unpunished': Russian Defence Ministry

Images of the earlier attackonBelgorod circulatingon social media showed cars set alight and plumes of black smoke rising among damaged buildings as air raid sirens sounded. Strikeshit close to a public ice rink in the heart of the city, also reaching a shopping centre, residential buildings and a car.

Speaking on social media Saturday, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov described the consequences of the strike as the worst the city had faced since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.

The United Nations has said more than 10,000 civilians have been killedin Ukraine though it cautionsthe actual figure may be much higher and more than six million have been displaced.

Russia's Defence Ministry said it identified the ammunition used in the strike as Czech-made Vampire rockets and Olkha cluster munitions. It provided no additional information, and The Associated Press was unable to verify its claims.

"This crime will not go unpunished," the ministry said in a statement on social media.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had been briefed on the situation, and that the country's health minister, Mikhail Murashko, was ordered to join a delegation of medical personnel and rescue workers travelling to Belgorod from Moscow.

Russianministry spokesperson blames EU

No official comment was immediately available from Kyiv, but the Ukrainian news outlet RBC-Ukraine quoted sources as saying Ukrainian forces had struck military targets in Belgorod in response to a massive Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities the previous day.

Russian diplomats also called for a meeting of the UN Security Council in connection with the strike. Speaking to Russia's state news agency, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Britain and the United States were guilty of encouraging Kyiv to carry out what she described as a "terrorist attack."

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She also placed blame on EU countries thathad supplied Ukraine with weapons.

"Silence in response to the unbridled barbarity of Ukraine's Nazis and their puppeteers and accomplices from 'civilized democracies' will be akin to complicity in their bloody deeds," the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier on Saturday, Moscow officials had reported shooting down 32 Ukrainian drones over the country's Moscow, Bryansk, Oryol, and Kursk regions.

They also reported that cross-border shelling had killed two otherpeople in Russia. A man died and four other people were injured when a missile struck a private home in the Belgorod region late Friday evening and a nine-year-old was killed in a separate incident in the Bryansk region.

Strikes ongoing after Friday barrage against Ukraine

Cities across western Russia have come under regular attack from drones since May, with Russian officials blaming Kyiv. Ukrainian officials never acknowledge responsibility for attacks on Russian territory or the Crimean peninsula.

However, larger aerial strikes against Russia have previously followed heavy assaults on Ukrainian cities.

Russian drone strikes against Ukraine continued Saturday, with the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reporting that 10 Iranian-made Shahed drones had been shot down across the Kherson, Khmelnytskyiand Mykolaiv regions.

Local officials reported that three people had been killed by Russian missiles: a 55-year-old man in the Kherson region, a 43-year-old man in Stepnohirsk, a town in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, and a 32-year-old in the Chernihiv region.

WATCH | Russia blasts Ukraine in worst aerial barrage since war began:

Russia launches most intensive attack on Ukraine since invasion began

9 months ago

Duration 2:45

Russia killed dozens in Ukraine after striking residential towers, a hospital and schools in what's being called the largest aerial attack since the start of the war. Ukraine says it shot down most of the missiles and drones Russia sent, but Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy is vowing to respond for every strike.

On Friday, Moscow's forces launched 122 missiles and dozens of drones across Ukraine, an onslaught described by one air force official as the biggest aerial barrage of the war that began with the Russian invasion in February 2022.

As well as the 39 deaths, at least 160 people were wounded and an unknown number were buried under rubble in the assault, which damaged a maternity hospital, apartment blocks, and schools.

Front-line fighting bogged down by winter weather

Western officials and analysts recently warned that Russia limited its cruise missile strikes for months in an apparent effort to build up stockpiles for massive strikes during the winter, hoping to break the Ukrainians' spirit.

Fighting along the front line is largely bogged down by winter weather after Ukraine's summer counteroffensive failed to make a significant breakthrough along the roughly 1,000-kilometre line of contact.

Russia's ongoing aerial attacks have also sparked concern for Ukraine's neighbours.

Poland's defence forces said Friday that an unknown object had entered the country's airspace before vanishing off radars, and that all indications pointed to it being a Russian missile.

Speaking to Russian state media outlet RIA Novostion Saturday, Russia's charg d'affaires in Poland, Andrei Ordash, said that Moscow would not comment on the event until Warsaw had given the Kremlin evidence of an airspace violation.

"We will not give any explanations until we are presented with concrete evidence because these accusations are unsubstantiated," he said.

Some 500 Polish Territorial Defence troops combed an area between the city of Zamosc and the border with Ukraine for any traces of the object Saturday, but officials said nothing suspicious was found.

Poland's border with Ukraine is also the European Union and NATO's border with Ukraine.