Russia accused Ukraine of conducting a “terrorist attack” on civilians in Belgorod during an emergency meeting on Saturday of the U.N. Security Council requested by Moscow.
Russia said Ukraine attacked the city of Belgorod with missiles and rockets, killing at least 21 people and wounding dozens more, including 17 children, according to local authorities.
It was “a terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime against a civilian city,” Russia’s ambassador to the U.N. Vasily Nebenzya said.
“In order to increase the number of casualties of the terrorist attack they used cluster munitions,” he continued, claiming that Kyiv targeted a sports center, an ice rink and a university.
“(It was a) deliberate, indiscriminate attack against a civilian target,” he said.
Ukrainian allies quickly retorted, saying Russia had started the war.
Serhii Dvornyk, counsellor of Ukrainian Mission to U.N. said that “as long as this war, unleashed by the Kremlin dictator endures, the toll of death and suffering will continue to grow.”
The U.S. Representative John Kelley also put the blame squarely on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This is (Putin’s) war, it is his choice,” he said. “Russia could end this war today. … We call for the protection of all civilians on all sides of every conflict.”
The British envoy Thomas Phipps said London deeply regrets any civilian losses but called out Moscow for starting the war with an invasion two years ago.
“There are hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. There is not a single Ukrainian soldier in Russia,” he said.
“If Russia wants someone to blame for the deaths of Russians in this war, it should start with President Putin,” he said.
Phipps likewise said that Russia was to blame for targeting civilians.
The French envoy Nicolas de Riviere said Ukraine was simply defending itself under U.N. laws, while Moscow was “trampling” the U.N. Charter.
Ukraine, which has been resisting a Russian invasion for nearly two years and earlier this week came under a huge Russian missile and drone assault, has not officially commented on the strike against Belgorod.
Belgorod lies about 30 kilometers from the border with Ukraine and has been repeatedly struck by what Moscow says is indiscriminate shelling by Kyiv’s forces.
AFP was not able to independently verify the circumstances of the strike, one of the deadliest on Russian soil since Moscow launched hostilities against Ukraine in February 2022.