Russia vows retaliation after ATACMS missiles target Belgorod

MOSCOW: Russia vowed on Saturday to retaliate after it accused Ukraine of firing US-supplied ATACMS missiles at the border region of Belgorod the previous day.

Outgoing US President Joe Biden authorised Kyiv to use the long-range weapons against Russia last year, in a move the Kremlin denounced as a grave escalation of the nearly three-year conflict.

“On January 3, an attempt was made from Ukrainian territory to launch a missile strike against the Belgorod region using US-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles,” the Russian defence ministry said.

“These actions by the Kyiv regime, which is supported by Western curators, will be met with retaliation,” it added, saying all the missiles were shot down.

The ministry said earlier that air defences downed eight ATACMS missiles in total, without saying when or where.

Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened last year to strike central Kyiv with a hypersonic ballistic missile if Ukraine continued hitting Russian territory with long-range Western weapons.

US President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview last month he was “very vehemently” opposed to Ukraine using the arms, which he said were “escalating” the conflict.

Both Kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of fatal attacks on civilians since the year began.

A Russian strike on a village in Ukraine’s northeast Kharkiv region earlier on Saturday killed a 74-year-old man, regional governor Oleg Synegubov said.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday it had captured the Ukrainian village of Nadiia, one of the few settlements in the eastern Lugansk region still under Kyiv’s control. Moscow advanced by almost 4,000 square kilometres (1,540 square miles) in Ukraine in 2024, according to an AFP analysis, as Kyiv’s army struggled with chronic manpower shortages and exhaustion.Earlier, Russian forces continue to launch attacks near the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in an effort to bypass it from the south and cut off supply routes to Ukraine’s troops, the Ukrainian military said.

The capture of the road and rail hub in the eastern Donetsk region could create serious difficulties for the Ukrainian army on the eastern front and also allow Russia to reinforce and advance its front line to the west. “The Pokrovsk direction remains the hottest and there the Russians attacked 34 times (in the past 24 hours) and tried to break through our defences south of Pokrovsk,” Viktor Trehubov, spokesman for Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of forces, told Ukrainian national television.

The city, home to a mine that is the sole supplier of coking coal to Ukraine’s once-giant steel industry, had a pre-war population of some 60,000 people. Ukraine estimates that around 11,000 of them remain in the city. Trehubov said Russian forces were trying to block supply routes by sending small groups of soldiers to settlements south of Pokrovsk. He said Kyiv’s forces were using drones and precision weapons to try and prevent Russian troops from reaching their targets.