‘Situation in Belgorod Still Tense,’ Russian Governor Says

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said today: “The situation in Belgorod is tense. In the morning there were two attacks. The air defense system worked.”

Gladkov added: “Our air defense system worked over Belgorod and the Belgorod district – several air targets were shot down on the approach to the city.”

Later, the Russian Defense Ministry stated that air defense systems had destroyed six Tochka-U missiles and six Vilkha missiles over the Belgorod region.

In addition, Gladkov commented on “yesterday’s difficult day,” reporting that 1 person had been killed and 11 injured.

Kyiv Post’s source among the special services said that “Ukraine will continue to adequately respond to the terrorist missile attacks of the Russian invaders by striking at the military facilities of the aggressor state.”

The source also noted that the damage to Russia’s civilian infrastructure is only the result of Russian air defense operations.

“All the damage to the occupiers’ civilian infrastructure is the result of incompetent actions of their air defense,” the source added.

On Jan. 8, Gladkov will hold a meeting of the operational headquarters. School holidays are planned to be extended until Jan. 19 in Belgorod and seven other districts.

“I think all of you will agree that this measure is necessary today. And then we will see and make decisions based on the operational situation,” the governor said.

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Gladkov said that a large number of Belgorod residents asked him to launch SMS alerts during the shelling, but “it is impossible to send SMS messages to all users at the same time.”

He lamented: “Unfortunately, the technical capabilities are not such. If you remember, a few months ago, during the shelling of Shebekino, SMS messages came an hour after the shelling ended.”

During the shelling of Belgorod on Dec. 30, more than 20 local residents were killed and more than 100 injured.

Senior Lieutenant Mikhail Konopitsyn, an officer of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, was reported to have been killed during this shelling.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, in November 2023, Konopitsyn had been sent to Belgorod to work as part of the military investigation department of the Investigative Committee of Russia. Before that, he fought against Ukraine as a platoon commander of anti-tank missiles.