Missile hits busy road as 10 die in rare Ukrainian attacks on Russian city

Vladimir Putin informed of casualties in Belgorod, where Kyiv’s assault followed Russia’s most intense air strikes since its invasion

A missile struck a busy road in the centre of a Russian city early on Saturday during an attack by Ukraine, crashing down on cars and leaving them burning while people ran for their lives.
Plumes of smoke could be seen billowing from the streets of Belgorod, close to the border with Ukraine, as vehicles went up in flames and rubble littered the road.
Attacks later in the day on the city killed 10 people and injured 45 more, the Kremlin said, adding that Vladimir Putin had been briefed about the situation.
“President Vladimir Putin has been informed about the Ukrainian armed forces’ strike on residential neighbourhoods in Belgorod,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS news agency.
It remains unclear whether the strike on the road in Belgorod was caused by a Ukrainian missile or errant Russian air defences.
While Russia routinely fires missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities to terrorise the populations, the destruction in Belgorod is a rare example of a projectile striking civilian targets inside Russia.
On Friday, Russia carried out its largest aerial assault on Ukraine since the start of the war, killing 31 people and wounding at least 144
Ukraine responded on Saturday with rockets and 32 drones, which were detected over Moscow, Bryansk, Oryol, and Kursk regions and destroyed, Russian officials said. A child was killed by shelling in Bryansk, they added.
Moscow’s forces launched an estimated 158 missiles and drones across Ukraine on Friday,  and although 114 were intercepted, a maternity hospital, apartment blocks and schools were among the target hit.
“Today Russia hit us with almost everything it has in its arsenal,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said following the attacks.
According to the Institute of the Study of War, western analysts believe Russia’s attacks show that “Putin’s maximalist goals in Ukraine remain unchanged” and that he is not “genuinely interested in a ceasefire or any sort of negotiated settlement”.
It added that Russian forces will likely “conduct intensified strikes in the coming days” to coincide with the New Year holiday as they did last year to “degrade Ukrainian morale”.
Heavy fighting is continuing in eastern Ukraine, with Russian forces recently making confirmed advances in Zaporizhia Oblast. Ukrainian forces meanwhile are maintaining positions on the east (left) bank of Kherson.
The UK Ministry of Defence estimates that the average daily number of Russian casualties – those killed and wounded in Ukraine – has risen by almost 300 per day compared to 2022.
It said that the increase “almost certainly reflects the degradation of Russia’s forces” and its transition to “a lower quality, high quantity mass army” since the partial mobilisation of reservists in Sept 2022.
If casualties continue at the current rate through the next year, by 2025 Russia will have had more than half a million personnel killed and wounded over three years of war, it added.
This compares to the Soviet Union’s 70,000 casualties in the nine-year Soviet-Afghan War.