At least 10 killed in Kherson shelling, fueling anger over Christmas strikes

Shelling in the recently recaptured Ukrainian city of Kherson killed at least 10 people Saturday morning, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine warned that another wave of Russian strikes could mar the Christmas holidays.

“With the approaching holiday season, Russian terrorists may become active again,” Zelenskyy said in his overnight address. “Therefore, please heed the air raid signals, help each other and always take care of each other.”

His comments came after the Ukrainian military warned on Friday that Russian ships carrying cruise missiles had entered the Black Sea for the first time since Dec. 16, when Moscow fired a barrage of missiles across Ukraine.

The streets of Kherson were busy Saturday morning when Russian forces shelled the city center, according to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the president’s office.

A shopping area and residential buildings – “places where the most people are” – were hit, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the head of Kherson’s military administration, said in a statement.

In addition to the 10 people killed, 55 people were wounded in the attack – of whom 18 were in serious condition, he later told Ukrainian television, according to the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet. Two of the wounded were volunteers who had been distributing food aid when the shells hit, according to Matthew Hollingworth, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine.

Images posted by Zelenskyy on his Telegram account of the attack’s aftermath showed several people and blood in the street, as well as burning cars. He said that they showed “the real life of Ukraine and Ukrainians.”

“In the morning, on Saturday, on the eve of Christmas, in the central part of the city,” Zelenskyy wrote. “These are not military facilities. This is not a war according to the rules defined. It is terror, it is killing for the sake of intimidation and pleasure.”

Ukraine celebrates Christmas as a national holiday on Dec. 25 – in line with the Western calendar – as well as on Jan. 7, for churches observing the Eastern Orthodox religious holiday.

The attack on Saturday was only the latest in Kherson, which has been battered by Russian shelling since Ukrainian forces retook the city last month. On Friday, five people in the region were killed and 17 others were wounded, Tymoshenkso said in an update before the most recent shelling.

The Christmas Eve bombardment, though – exactly 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, on Feb. 24 – prompted a rush of anger.

“While families in Europe, North America, and beyond prepare festive dinners, spare a thought for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, wrote on Twitter alongside images of the aftermath.

The Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said that the “barbaric” shelling was Russia’s “revenge” on Kherson residents who had resisted the occupation, while Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, condemned the “brutal” strike on a city whose citizens had “already suffered so much” when retreating Russian forces cut off power and water to Kherson on their way out.

“Truly horrific, especially on Christmas Eve,” she tweeted.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is now fought in two largely separate arenas: ground battles in the south and east, and air contests between Ukraine’s defense systems and Russia’s cruise missiles and drones aimed at electrical infrastructure. Military analysts say the infrastructure-targeting campaign is intended to demoralize Ukrainians and push their government into a cease-fire that might allow Russia time to regroup and rearm for future offensives.

Since October, Russia has fired volleys of missiles and drones at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in intervals of roughly a week to 10 days, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence chief. Most barrages have included around 75 missiles.

That tempo is likely set based on Russia’s weapons supply, Britain’s defense intelligence agency said on Saturday.

“Russia has likely limited its long-range missile strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure to around once a week due to the limited availability of cruise missiles,” the agency said in its daily update. “Similarly, Russia is unlikely to have increased its stockpile of artillery munitions enough to enable large-scale offensive operations.”

For weeks, Ukrainian officials have expressed concern that Russian forces could use neighboring Belarus as a launchpad for a new ground offensive, with Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, a potential target. A rare visit by President Vladimir Putin this week to Belarus to meet with his closest regional ally, President Alexander Lukashenko, amplified those concerns. Lukashenko, in turn, traveled to Russia on Saturday, state media reported.

But the director of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday that, while the possibility could not be entirely ruled out, a recent flurry of Russian military activity in Belarus was an attempt by Moscow to trick Ukraine into diverting soldiers from the active front line in the southeast of the country.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, also said in its latest report that there was no evidence that Russia was preparing a strike force in Belarus, and that a renewed invasion from the country was “unlikely” this winter.

Russian forces have “been much more clearly setting conditions for an offensive” in the northwestern part of the Luhansk region, the institute said, citing increased transport of Russian military equipment and personnel to the area.

As Ukrainian officials warned of further strikes, the country was still grappling with the devastation caused by the most recent barrages of missiles.

Ukrenergo, the national electric utility, said on Saturday in a Facebook post that “significant” electricity shortages persisted, with the Kyiv region experiencing the greatest difficulties as a result of Russian attacks on Dec. 19. Those strikes hit a critical piece of infrastructure, and Ukraine’s utilities have been instituting longer and more unpredictable power outages to keep the grid stable.

Ukrainians have grown increasingly frustrated by the weeks of power outages and months of hardship as freezing weather sets in. But they have also adapted: In Kyiv, stationary bikes were powering the lights on some Christmas trees amid the rolling blackouts.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.