At least 17 injured in Russian missile strikes in Ukraine’s Kharkiv

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - At least 17 people were injured due to Russian missile strikes in the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, local officials said on Wednesday.

Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synyehubov said on Telegram that Kharkiv was hit twice with S-300 missiles from Russia’s Belgorod region late Tuesday.

“As a result … 17 civilians were injured: 16 women aged 38 to 90 and a 31-year-old man,” Synyehubov said, adding that two of them are in either “extremely serious” or in “serious” condition.

He said that about 20 apartment buildings and the premises of a private medical institution were damaged in the city’s Kholodnohirskyi district, while 14 cars were destroyed.

Russian authorities have not yet commented on the strikes.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have exchanged accusations over airstrikes against each other that intensified since late December, when at least 40 people were killed in various regions of Ukraine in a massive air attack, which President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as the "heaviest attack" since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

On Jan. 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country will not let “a single crime of this kind” go unpunished following a subsequent raid on the Russian city of Belgorod, which killed 25 people and wounded many others.