Moscow: Russia vowed to retaliate on Saturday after it accused Ukraine of firing a US-supplied ATACMS missile into the Belgorod border region yesterday.
Outgoing US President Joe Biden last year authorized Kiev to use long-range weapons against Russia, which the Kremlin condemned as a serious escalation of the nearly three-year-old conflict.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that on January 3, a missile attack was attempted from Ukrainian territory on the Belgorod region using US-made ATACMS operational tactical missiles.
“The actions of the Kiev government, which is backed by Western custodians, will be retaliated against,” he added, adding that all the missiles had been shot down.
The ministry earlier said that air defense shot down a total of eight ATACMS missiles, without specifying when or where.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last year threatened to launch a hypersonic ballistic missile attack on central Kiev if Ukraine continued to attack Russian territory with long-range Western weapons.
US President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview last month that he was “very strongly” against Ukraine’s use of weapons, which he said were “escalating” the conflict.
Kiev and Moscow have accused each other of deadly attacks on civilians since the start of the year.
A 74-year-old man was killed in a Russian attack on a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region on Saturday, regional governor Oleg Senigobov said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday it had captured the Ukrainian village of Nadia, one of the few settlements in the eastern Luhansk region still under Kiev’s control. According to an AFP analysis, Moscow will advance about 4,000 square kilometers (1,540 square miles) in Ukraine in 2024, as Kiev’s military struggles with chronic manpower shortages and exhaustion. Tried to bypass it from the south and cut off its supply routes. Ukrainian soldiers said that the Ukrainian army.
Capturing a road and rail hub in the eastern Donetsk region could create serious difficulties for the Ukrainian military on the eastern front and also allow Russia to further strengthen and advance its front line westward. “The Pokrosk direction is the hottest and there the Russians attacked 34 times (in the last 24 hours) and tried to break through our defenses south of Pokrosk,” Viktor Trekhubov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Khretetsya group of forces, told Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. told national television.
The city, home to a mine that is the sole supplier of coking coal to Ukraine’s once-giant steel industry, had a pre-war population of about 60,000. Ukraine estimates there are about 11,000 of them in the city. Russian forces are trying to block supply routes by sending small groups of troops into settlements south of Pokrosk, Trekhubov said. He said Kiev’s forces were using drones and precision weapons to prevent Russian troops from reaching their targets.