The governor of Belgorod, the Russian province on the other side of the border from Kharkiv, Ukraine, said on Monday that at least one person was wounded by falling debris after three missiles were intercepted near the town of Novy Oskol.
Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the one known injury was “a man with shrapnel wounds to his hand.” He also said the debris knocked out some power lines near Novy Oskol.
“Our air defenses were triggered in Novy Oskol. Three missiles were shot down. The consequences on the ground are being specified … All emergency and rescue services have rushed to the scene,” Gladkov said.
Reuters noted that Gladkov did not explicitly blame the Ukrainian military for launching the missiles, but he has accused the Ukrainians of launching similar strikes in the past. For their part, the Ukrainians rarely issue a formal claim of responsibility for attacks on Russian soil.
The day before the missiles were intercepted, the Belgorod village of Schetinovka reported a barn and some power lines were damaged by artillery fire.
On Saturday, a bomb-laden unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reportedly crashed into an empty fuel tank at a pipeline substation in Razumnoye, Belgorod. The drone blew a one-square-meter hole in the tank, prompting four people to evacuate the substation, but no injuries were reported.
Gladkov claimed in February that debris from three weaponized UAVs was found near the provincial capital, which is also named Belgorod, after a series of explosions in the area. One eyewitness reported seeing a drone fly through the window of an apartment before detonating.
The BBC interviewed Belgorod residents in February who felt the Russian government was not doing enough to protect them from the war raging on the other side of the border. The locals nevertheless professed to fully support leader Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, festooning their streets with nationalist billboards and imbibing war propaganda from Moscow.
“Ukraine is a Western puppet and the West has always wanted to destroy Russia. Hitler wanted to grab our land. Who doesn’t? We have such an enormous country,” a law student told the BBC, echoing a common propaganda theme that Ukraine is essentially Nazi Germany reborn.
“Russia didn’t provoke this war. A Russian will give you the shirt off his back. Russia didn’t attack Ukraine. Russians are peace-loving and generous,” exclaimed a woman who ran a church choir in Belgorod.
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