Home › Security › Kharkiv and Belgorod under fire at year's end
Kharkiv and Belgorod under fire at year's end
Summary
Strikes on both sides of the border in the last days of 2023 left dozens of civilians dead or injured.
What did the final days of 2023 look like along the Ukrainian–Russian border? By 1 January 2024, the answer was a run of deadly strikes on cities on both sides of it.
On 30 December 2023, Russian forces attacked Kharkiv with missiles, injuring at least 16 people, including a foreign journalist, and damaging civilian infrastructure. The bombardment continued on 31 December. Ukrainian authorities said 26 people were injured and many residential buildings in the city centre were destroyed. The Ukrainian Air Force reported shooting down 21 of 49 attacking drones.
Belgorod
Also on 30 December, explosions hit the Russian city of Belgorod. The Russian Defence Ministry said Ukraine had launched drone and missile strikes, killing 25 people and injuring 110. As reported at the time, Russian sources described the blasts as shelling by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, while Ukraine attributed the explosions to the work of Russian air defence.
What the sequence shows
The two cities lie close to the border, and within roughly 48 hours both reported civilian casualties from air attacks. Kharkiv was hit on consecutive days, with residential areas in the centre damaged on 31 December. The Belgorod toll was the higher of the two in lives lost, at 25 dead, while Kharkiv's reported toll was of injured.
The competing accounts of Belgorod stood unresolved on 1 January 2024: Moscow pointed to Ukrainian strikes, and Kyiv pointed to Russian air defence. The Kharkiv attacks, by contrast, were described as Russian bombardment, with air defence stopping fewer than half of the drones launched on 31 December.
