Russia has accused Ukraine of using internationally banned cluster munitions in a “terrorist attack” that targeted civilians in the western Russian city of Belgorod.
Russia’s Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya made the remarks on Saturday while addressing an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that had been requested by Moscow.
According to Russian authorities, Kiev’s missile attack on Belgorod killed at least 21 people and left at least 110 wounded, including 17 children. They added that the death toll included at least three children.
“In order to increase the number of casualties of the terrorist attack they used cluster munitions,” Nebenzya said, adding that it was a “deliberate, indiscriminate attack” against civilian targets, which included a sports center, an ice rink, and a university.
It was “a terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime against a civilian city,” the Russian envoy emphasized, adding, “The UN Security Council’s members have an opportunity to do their duty and assess the damage done to a Russian city.”
Earlier in the day, Russian officials said the Ukrainian attack on the Belgorod Oblast in western part of the country had left many civilians, including children, dead and wounded.
Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the Ukrainian attack had damaged 55 homes, two private businesses, a football pitch, a leisure center, and a preschool, urging all residents on social media to move to air raid shelters as sirens sounded.
Russia’s RIA news agency posted images showing at least three cars on fire, and other images posted online showed black smoke rising from the provincial capital city of Belgorod.
The Russian Defense Ministry said more than a dozen Ukrainian missiles had been destroyed and 32 drones shot down in the Bryansk, Oryol, Kursk, and Moscow regions.
The ministry added in its statement that the attack on Belgorod would “not go unpunished.”
Russia launched what it calls a special military operation in Ukraine on February 22, 2022, after the ex-Soviet republic declared its plan to join the US-led military alliance of NATO.
Since then, the United States and Ukraine’s other Western allies have supplied Kiev with tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including rocket systems, drones, armored vehicles, tanks, and communication systems.
