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What did 22 December 2024 follow in the war?
Summary
Strikes on both sides of the border in the days before 22 December 2024 shaped a grim weekend for civilians in Ukraine and Russia.
What had the previous two days brought as 22 December 2024 began? Strikes in both directions, each with civilian casualties, and each prompting its own claims and complaints.
On 20 December 2024, Russian missile strikes on civilian infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih and Kyiv killed at least one person and injured eight others. Kryvyi Rih had already been a repeated target of Russian artillery fire and air raids during the war.
The same day, a Ukrainian missile strike hit Rylsk in Kursk Oblast, Russia. According to acting Kursk Oblast governor Alexander Khinshtein, six people were killed and 10 injured. Russia said it would raise the strike at the United Nations Security Council.
On 21 December 2024, at least seven Ukrainian drones struck Kazan, Russia. Six of them reportedly hit residential areas, including a 32-storey apartment building.
A pattern of civilian harm
Taken together, the reports from 20 and 21 December 2024 describe strikes reaching residential and civilian sites in Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Rylsk and Kazan. Russia's decision to take the Rylsk strike to the Security Council showed that Moscow intended to press the matter diplomatically as well as militarily.
The Kursk Oblast strike took place in the context of the 2024 Kursk offensive, which had put that region at the centre of the fighting. Kazan, by contrast, lay far from the front line, and the reported hits there on residential areas were among the day's most striking developments.
These events formed the backdrop to 22 December 2024: a war in which both sides reported attacks that harmed civilians, and in which the casualty figures and the locations were reported as they came in.
