MOSCOW: Russia says that Ukraine has killed four people, including children, in south-western Russia with air strikes in the past 24 hours.
The Russian defence ministry also says that it has destroyed many of the missiles and drones that Ukraine fired into its territory.
This is in response to Russia’s huge missile and drone attack on Ukraine on Friday, which caused 39 deaths.
The attack hit Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Lviv, and injured nearly 160 people.
Kyiv says that it was the worst missile attack by Russia since the war started.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says that Russia attacked almost 120 towns and cities on Friday, and damaged hundreds of “civilian objects”.
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitchsko says that seven more bodies were found in the rubble of a warehouse that was hit – making the total number of deaths in the city 16.
He says that Friday’s attack on Ukraine was the deadliest for civilians in Kyiv, and declares that the city will mourn on Monday.
Belgorod, the administrative centre of the border region, is 80km (50 miles) north of Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city that Russia heavily bombed on Friday morning.
The Russian defence ministry says that it stopped 13 missiles over the region overnight.
It also says that it shot down 32 drones in the Bryansk, Oryol, Kursk and Moscow regions overnight.
The governor of Belgorod region says that two children died in Belgorod on Saturday, and several others were hurt.
He had earlier said that a man died in the city when a house was hit. He also says that four people are being treated for their wounds and that the water supply in the city was disrupted.
The governor of Bryansk region says that a child, born in 2014, died in two villages that were targeted.
He says that the attacks damaged 55 houses, two private businesses, a football field, a leisure centre and a pre-school.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukraine of being behind the drone strikes in recent months, but Ukraine has not confirmed this.
Ukrainian media, citing sources from Ukraine’s intelligence services, say that more than 70 drones were used in Friday’s attacks and that they only targeted military sites.
They say that explosions were heard in regions such as Moscow, Belgorod, Tula and Tver, and that a group of drones hit an electronic factory in Bryansk that made Russian military equipment like long-range missiles and anti-aircraft systems.
On Friday night, the UN Security Council condemned Russia’s renewed mass-bombing campaign in Ukraine and called for the attacks to stop “immediately”.
Countries such as the US, UK and France say that Russia violated the international rules of war by hitting civilian infrastructure.
“Putin chose to mark this holiday season… with an unprecedented number of drone and missile attacks, instead of peace,” John Kelley, the US representative to the UN, said.
Russia says that Ukrainian air defences caused the damage to civilian buildings.
