Five civilians killed in Ukrainian strike in Belgorod region

Photo: Yan Dobronosov Agence France-Presse A damaged statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin in the Ukrainian-controlled Russian city of Sudja in the Kursk region on August 16, 2024.

Agence France-Presse in Moscow

Published at 9:30 p.m.

• Europe

Five civilians were killed and 12 others injured in a Ukrainian strike on the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Sunday.

The attack on the village of Rakitnoe “cost the lives of five civilians,” Gladkov said, citing “12 people injured, including three minors.”

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Four of them, a woman hit by shrapnel in the abdomen who was being operated on, and three men, are in critical condition, the governor said.

The Russian regions bordering Ukraine have been increasingly targeted by kyiv, since the start of an unprecedented offensive by the Ukrainian army on August 6 in Kursk, neighboring Belgorod.

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Moscow announced in mid-August that it was sending additional forces to the Belgorod region, where a state of emergency had been declared, and then evacuating five villages on the Ukrainian border starting on August 19.

According to kyiv, the ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Russia, the largest offensive by a foreign army on Russian soil since World War II, is aimed, among other things, at forcing Moscow to move troops from eastern Ukraine.