The Russian city of Belgorod, located about fifty miles from the border with Ukraine, faced renewed attacks on Thursday that left multiple dead and wounded. The earlier clash, occurring in the morning, produced a toll that varies by source but includes at least five fatalities and as many as nine, among them a one-year-old baby, according to Russian reports.
The assault, which Moscow has attributed to Ukraine, struck a shopping center and a school site, according to Roman Starovoit, the governor of the neighboring Kursk region, in a Telegram post. Belgorod’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported 17 injuries, six of whom were in critical condition. Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to the allegations.
The prior bombardment of Belgorod, the city most affected by the conflict, dates back to December of the previous year. In that episode, Russia blamed Ukraine and put the death toll at about 25 across Belgorod, Briansk, and other towns in the southwest region.
Alarms in Kiev
The latest events come after Ukrainian forces attacked a Russian vessel in the Black Sea near Crimea earlier in the week. Concurrently, a wave of missiles was launched in the early hours of Thursday against the Kyiv region. There were no casualties because air defenses intercepted the missiles, but the city’s anti-air sirens sounded loudly.
Around mid-morning, alerts resurfaced in Kyiv, reportedly due to a MIG taking off. Additional strikes were confirmed in several Ukrainian regions, especially those near front lines, including Donetsk in the east.
Costs of Reconstruction
Amid the escalating crisis, a joint report from the United Nations, the World Bank, the European Commission, and the Ukrainian government estimated the cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine at 486 billion dollars. The figure marks an increase of 75 billion dollars from the assessment released last year.
In response, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal urged international partners to take decisive action to confiscate frozen Russian assets abroad as a cornerstone of funding Ukraine’s rebound. He argued that the principal resource for rebuilding should be the seized assets held in the West, and called for this process to begin within the current year.