MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Moscow would intensify strikes on military targets in Ukraine, after an unprecedented Ukrainian attack over the weekend on the Russian city of Belgorod.

The Ukrainian attack on Saturday, which killed 25 people including five children, came after Moscow launched a large-scale attack on Ukrainian cities.

“We’re going to intensify the strikes. No crime against civilians will rest unpunished, that’s for certain,” Putin said during a visit to a military hospital. He said Russia would continue to hit what he called “military installations”.

“We are doing that today and tomorrow we will continue doing it,” Putin announced, speaking almost two years into Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.

Four killed by shelling in Moscow-held Done­tsk on New Year’s eve

Ukrainian shelling of the Moscow-held city of Donetsk on New Year’s Eve killed four people and wounded 13, Russian-installed authorities said on Monday.

The shelling came at the end of a deadly week in Ukraine, with both sides hitting each other with large-scale attacks.

“As a result of Ukrainian shelling of central Donetsk on New Year’s Eve we can say that there are four dead and 13 wounded,” the Russian-installed head of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, said in a video on Telegram, adding that Ukraine used cluster munitions.

Pushilin said the attack hit the Voroshilov district in central Donetsk.

He accused Ukraine of “having an aim to cause as much harm as possible to the civilian population because it used cluster munitions.” The US has supplied Kyiv with cluster munitions, in a move that was criticised even by its own allies.

Cluster munitions are a controversial weapon designed to disperse or release tiny explosives. They explode mid-air and scatter bomblets over a wide area, and also pose a lasting threat.

Meanwhile, Kyiv said Russia had targeted the country with a “record” number of drones on New Year’s Day.

“What happened in Belgorod is a terrorist act,” Putin told wounded Russian soldiers sitting near him in hospital pyjamas and sanitary masks. “There is no other way to call it.”

He accused Ukrainian forces of targeting “right in the city centre, where people were walking around, before New Year’s Eve” and alleged they had “purposefully hit the civilian population”.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said that the death toll had risen to 25, saying medics were unable to save a toddler who was seriously injured in the attack.

“Today in the local children’s hospital a four-year-old girl, who was in a serious condition with severe injuries to the chest and internal organs, died,” Gladkov said.

Her death brought the number of child victims of the attack to five. “This is an irreparable loss for all of us,” Gladkov said.

He said a total of 109 people were wounded, 45 of which are still in medical facilities.

Speaking about the situation on the battlefield, Putin said he believed the “strategic initiative” in the drawn-out conflict in Ukraine was on the Russian side. “In any case, that is how I am being briefed,” he said.

He also claimed Moscow wanted to end the conflict — which has dragged on for almost two years — “as quickly as possible” but “only on our terms”, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2024