The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, on Sunday morning called on residents of the Russian city to hide in shelters as warning sirens were activated for incoming missiles in the city.

Twenty-four people were killed in the city yesterday in “indiscriminate” Ukrainian strikes, according to Moscow.

At the same time, the Ukrainian military destroyed 21 of the 49 drones with which Russia launched its latest air strike overnight, the Ukrainian Air Force announced today.

Most of the drones targeted Ukraine’s front line of defense as well as civilian, military infrastructure in Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolayiv and Zaporizhia provinces.

The tension between the two countries has intensified in recent days. Russia pounded the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv with missiles and drones hours before the New Year, Ukrainian officials said, in retaliation for the 24 dead, including three children, and 110 others injured in Ukraine’s attack on the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday.

The attack on the city of Belgorod followed Russia’s fierce offensive across Ukraine last Friday that killed 39 people and was described by Kiev as Russia’s biggest missile bombardment of the war so far.

In the first wave of Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory, at least six missiles hit Kharkivregional governor Oleh Sinyekhubov said today, injuring at least 28 people and damaging apartment buildings, hotels and medical facilities.

Earlier, Ukrainian officials said that two boys aged 14 and 16 and a security adviser to a group of German journalists were among the injured in Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine.

Around midnight, amid Russian shelling in many parts of Ukraine including Kiev, Russian drones struck apartment buildings in central Kharkiv, causing fires, the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said.

“On New Year’s Eve, the Russians want to intimidate the people of our city, but we are not afraid – we are not afraid, we are invincible!” Terekhov said.

Images from Kharkiv show badly damaged buildings, including a hotel with many windows broken.

From the Russian attacks in Kharkiv, the well-known Kharkiv Palace hotel, where journalists-correspondents of foreign networks often stay, was hit by a missile, with the information speaking of at least four victims, without specifying their origin, if they were hotel employees, or foreign nationals. Among other things, an apartment complex was hit and eight people were injured, announced the governor of the Kharkiv region.

At the UN, Russia directly accused Ukraine of a “terrorist attack” on the Russian city. This is a “terrorist attack by the Kiev regime on a city,” Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said during the UN Security Council meeting, which Moscow called for.

Reacting, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Serhii Dvornik, said that “as long as this war, launched by the Kremlin dictator, continues, casualties and suffering will continue to increase.”

Both sides have stepped up attacks in the final week of 2023, with Russian strikes killing at least 31 civilians in Russia’s largest airstrike of the 22-month war in Ukraine on Friday.

US President Joe Biden, asked if he would talk to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky after Russia’s recent attacks on Ukraine, replied: “I talk to him regularly.”

Ukraine