Russia and Ukraine exchange long-range attacks as their front-line forces remain bogged down

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that its air defenses shot down 10 Ukrainian air-launched missiles over Crimea and 10 over the Russian city of Belgorod, as both sides in the war pounded each other with long-range aerial strikes continuing late into the night while fighting along the front line remained largely deadlocked.

The White House, meanwhile, said U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Moscow has acquired ballistic missiles from North Korea and fired at least one of them into Ukraine on Dec. 30. It also is seeking close-range ballistic missiles from Iran, Washington said.

One person was wounded by the falling debris of a downed aerial target in Sevastopol, a major port and the largest city on the Russia-annexed Crimean Peninsula, regional Gov. Mikhail Razvozhayev said. More than 100 people also had to be evacuated from their homes in the peninsula after another attack late Thursday when shells fell but did not explode, Razvozhayev said.

In an attack around the same time late Thursday, two men sustained shrapnel wounds in the Russian city of Belgorod, the regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said. The city is near the border with Ukraine — on Saturday, shelling of Belgorod killed 25 people, including five children, in one of the deadliest strikes on Russian soil since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Russian military bloggers posted video of air raid sirens wailing in Crimea and Belgorod during Thursday’s attacks, and traffic was suspended on the bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized illegally a decade ago, with Russia’s Krasnodar region. The span is a key supply link for Russia.

On Wednesday night, Russia fired two S-300 missiles at central Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, which in the past week has come under almost daily aerial attack, according to regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov.

One person was killed in Russia’s morning missile attack on Kropyvnytskyi, a city in central Ukraine, regional Gov. Andrii Raikovych said on Telegram. An energy facility was damaged in the attack, which also targeted an industrial area, he said.

Ukraine’s air force said it intercepted two Shahed drones over the Khmelnytskyi region, in west-central Ukraine, which hosts an important air base at Starokostiantyniv.

Russia fired more than 500 drones and missiles in five days at Ukrainian targets between Dec. 29 and Jan. 2, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Strikes on Kyiv and the surrounding region during that period killed 34 people and wounded scores of others, city officials said. Six people were reported killed in a Russian aerial attack on Kharkiv on Jan. 2.

In Washington, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said recently declassified intelligence found that North Korea has provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several ballistic missiles.

Russian forces fired at least one of those missiles into Ukraine on Dec. 30, and it landed in an open field in the Zaporizhzhia region, he said. Russia also launched multiple North Korean ballistic missiles on Tuesday as part of an overnight attack, he added.

Kirby said a Russia-Iran deal had not been completed. But, he said, the U.S. “is concerned that Russia negotiations to acquire close range ballistic missiles from Iran are actively advancing.”

With Russia ramping up its missile and drone attacks during the winter, Ukraine has pleaded with its Western allies to keep supplying it with air defense weapons.

NATO and Ukrainian ambassadors are set to hold talks at Kyiv’s request in Brussels on Jan. 10 and are expected to discuss the country’s needs, an alliance official said.

“NATO allies have already delivered a vast array of air defense systems to Ukraine and they are committed to further bolstering Ukraine’s defenses,” said NATO spokesman Dylan White.

The announcement of the comes a day after NATO said that it would help buy up to 1,000 Patriot missiles so that its member countries can better protect their territory. The move could allow the allies to free up more of their own air defense systems for Ukraine.

Also Thursday, the Ukraine Security Service, known as SBU, claimed Russia was planning more cyberattacks on Kyivstar, the country’s biggest telecom provider, after an attack last month knocked out phone and internet services to its customers.

“The enemy planned to deliver several consecutive strikes (on Kyivstar) to keep people disconnected for as long as possible,” said Illia Vitiuk, the head of cybersecurity department in SBU, in a statement on Telegram.

Vitiuk alleged the attack was the work of Sandworm, a regular unit of Russian military intelligence that has targeted Ukrainian telecommunication operators and internet service providers, the statement said.

The cyberattack mostly affected civilians but didn’t have “a serious effect” on military communications because soldiers use various communication algorithms and protocols, according to the statement.

Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the Security Service says it has thwarted nearly 9,000 cyberattacks on state resources and critical infrastructure in Ukraine.

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Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Lorne Cook in Brussels and Colleen Long and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine