Russia fired cruise and ballistic missiles at a broad area of Ukraine early on Thursday, hitting multiple regions hours after a midnight strike in the country’s north east killed four people in an apartment building, authorities said.
Meanwhile, inside Russia, officials said Ukraine fired rockets against the border city of Belgorod, where five people were killed, including a child, and 18 people have been injured.
Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said five of the injured are children.
The governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said a shopping centre and a school stadium were hit in the missile attack.
“There are many casualties: dead and wounded,” he said on Telegram.
Air defence systems destroyed 14 rockets over the wider Belgorod region on Thursday, Russia’s ministry of defence said.
It said Ukraine launched them from a RM-70 Vampire multiple launch rocket system around midday local time.
Belgorod city, 25 miles north of the Ukrainian border, has been a regular target of Ukrainian fire, putting its residents on edge.
Dozens of people were killed and injured in an attack there over Russia’s New Year holiday weekend.
Those assaults have undermined President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to reassure Russians that life in the country is largely going on as normal.
In Ukraine, five people were injured in the night-time attack on the city of Chuhuiv, in the Kharkiv border region, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Hours later, missiles the targeted the capital Kyiv, the southern Zaporizhzhia region and Lviv in western Ukraine, among other places.
The Ukrainian air force said it intercepted 13 of the 26 missiles fired across the country.
Frequent Russian long-range bombardments are occurring as the almost two-year war has become bogged down in mostly trench and artillery warfare, which is destructive but is not bringing much change to the 930-mile front line.
The Russian missiles used on Thursday included Iskander ballistic missiles, Kalibr cruise missiles, guided aviation missiles and adapted S-300 anti-aircraft missiles.
Ukraine has also struck targets in Russian territory deep behind the front line. A fire broke out at an oil depot in Russia’s Kursk region after an attack by a Ukrainian drone, governor Roman Starovoit said on Thursday. There were no casualties, he said.
The Russian bombardment came a day after Ukraine’s military said it used high-tech naval drones to sink a Russian navy ship in the Black Sea, in what would be a significant success for Ukraine 10 days before the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24 2022.