Russia said Wednesday it had targeted a group of French fighters in a long-range strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, an attack authorities said injured more than a dozen civilians.
The Kremlin’s claim came hours after Ukraine’s foreign minister vowed to gain full control over its skies in 2024, as Russia’s full-scale assault enters its third year
Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city lying close to the Russian border, has been under persistent shelling since Russia launched large-scale hostilities in Ukraine in February 2022.
“On the evening of 16 January, the armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a precision strike on a temporary deployment point of foreign militants in the city of Kharkiv, the core of which were French mercenaries,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
The ministry claimed to have killed dozens of foreign militants in the attack and injured many more but did not provide evidence.
The strikes tore into a multi-storey building in central Kharkiv, gutting the structure and leaving debris strewn around the street below.
Kharkiv region governor Oleg Synegubov said that there were no military targets in the area.
Defeating Russia ‘takes time’
Officials in Kyiv have seen a steep rise in civilian casualties since December, as Moscow intensifies air attacks, reversing a downward trend seen earlier in 2023, the United Nations has warned.
“In 2024, of course the priority is to throw Russia from the skies,” Kuleba said in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“We are fighting a powerful enemy, a very big enemy that doesn’t sleep,” Kuleba said.
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