Putin pledges to intensify attacks on Ukraine following missile strikes on Belgorod
- 1 January, 00:31
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that recent Ukrainian missile attacks on Russia’s Belgorod city was a “terrorist attack” that will not go unpunished, adding that attacks on Ukraine will be intensified.
Speaking at a meeting with Russian servicemen in a hospital in Moscow, Putin said Russia would continue to strike “sensitive” military targets in Ukraine in response to the attack.
Twenty-five people were killed and 111 more were injured during the Ukrainian aerial bombardment of the border city of Belgorod in Russia on Saturday. Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a 4-year-old girl was among those killed. In a conversation with the servicemen, Putin also said that the course of the war in Ukraine was changing in favour of Russia, adding that Moscow hoped to end the war, but only on its own terms. He also touched upon Western military aid to Ukraine, saying that this was the main factor why the war was dragging on. However, unlike previous years, Putin’s traditional new year’s message this year was not dominated by the war in Ukraine. Putin made only a passing reference to Ukraine during the speech.
In his own new year address Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pledged to boost the country’s weapons production, saying that at least a million drones will be built in 2024.
There has been an exchange of deadly attacks between Russia and Ukraine in the past few days. Ukraine launched missile attacks on Russian-held Donetsk on New Year’s eve, killing four people and injuring 13 others. Another series of attacks was launched in south-west Russia on Saturday.
Last week, 45 people were killed in attacks across Ukrainian cities, in what Kyiv has described as Russia's biggest missile bombardment of the war so far.
