Russia saw the effects of its war on Ukraine dramatically reverberate back onto its own territory on Wednesday, after a “massive” shelling attack injured four people in Belgorod and preliminary information indicated a drone crashed and sparked a fire at an oil refinery further south.
Eight apartment buildings, four homes, a school and two administrative buildings were damaged during the shelling in Shebekino, a village in the border region of Belgorod, its governor said, as the oblast increasingly becomes a hotbed of straying violence.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov said there was more shelling of a border area later on Wednesday, which he blamed on Ukrainian forces.
Speaking in a live broadcast, he said an industrial plant close to the city of Shebekino had been struck. “The situation in Shebekino is not getting better,” Gladkov said in a live broadcast. “There is shelling of Shebekino, there is a fire at one of the industrial enterprises.”
Earlier on Tuesday night, Gladkov said one person was killed and two were injured in an attack on a temporary accommodation center.
And a drone crashed at the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region, east of the annexed territory of Crimea, starting a fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning, local officials there said. The blaze was put out soon after.
The incidents come one day after a drone attack on Moscow, for which Russia has blamed Ukraine. All eight aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles launched at the Russian capital were destroyed, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Kyiv has not yet commented on the drone attack or on Wednesday’s incidents in Belgorod and Krasnodar. The Ukrainian government generally does not confirm or deny strikes inside Russian territory.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, a drone attack was launched on Russia’s Bryansk region, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. About 10 drones tried to attack the Klimovsky district and were shot down or intercepted, RIA reported citing emergency services.
The string of events – following last week’s incursion on Belgorod by anti-Putin Russians who had been fighting alongside the Ukrainian military – mark a new turn in a conflict that is increasingly coming home to Russian people, 15 months after Moscow launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Strikes have separately hit Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine on Wednesday. Five people were killed and 19 injured in Ukrainian shelling of the village of Karpaty, in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Luhansk, the acting head of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic said on Telegram.
And a senior Russian-appointed official in Zaporizhzhia said there has been a series of explosions in Polohy, a Russian-held town close to the frontlines that many observers expect to be targeted in an anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive. Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Russian-formed council of the civil-military administration of Zaporizhzhia, said on Telegram: “It’s loud in Polohy. A series of explosions is heard in town.”
Russia says the situation is ‘rather alarming’
Ukraine has denied involvement in Tuesday’s attack in Moscow, even as one top official made it clear that Russia was getting a taste of its own medicine after months of bombarding Ukrainian cities.
“Of course, we enjoy watching and predicting an increase in attacks,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. “But of course, we have nothing to do directly with it.”
Russian officials reacted on Wednesday with a predictable array of anger. Taking about the situation in Belgorod, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a regular call with journalists on Wednesday: “We are indeed concerned about this situation, shelling of civilian objects continues there.”
“In this case, too, by the way, we have not heard a single word of condemnation from anyone from the collective West, so far,” Peskov said. “The situation is rather alarming. Measures are being taken.”