Ukraine updates: Belgorod says new attack amid Russia vote

The Russian border city of Belgorod reported two killed in Ukrainian attacks amid elections. Meanwhile, Ukrainians marked the second anniversary of a deadly Russian strike on the Mariupol theater. Follow DW for more.

Saturday’s attacks occurred as Russians entered the second day of voting in a presidential election

Shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, killed two people, Russian officials said.

Further afield, in the Samara region, drone strikes reportedly hit several Russian Rosneft oil refineries, causing a massive fire at one.

The attacks are occurring as Russians vote in presidential elections, with incumbent President Vladimir Putin certain to be victorious.

Also on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia will be held accountable for a deadly airstrike on Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol two years ago.

Russia struck the theater on March 16, 2022 as civilians were seeking shelter in the building. Estimations of the death toll are as high as 600 people.

This is a roundup of development in Russia’s war in Ukraine on Saturday, 16 April, 2023:

Mariupol theater bombing marked two years on

It’s been two years since the bombing of the Mariupol fheater, where as many as 600 people died after Russia bombed it.

“The world must remember everything Russia has done to Ukraine and Ukrainians, and each Russian murderer must be held accountable for their actions,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“We will ensure their accountability,” he added.

The city, that is now under Russian control, has suffered some of the worst physical destruction of any other place in Ukraine in the early months of the Russian invasion.

Also, on Saturday, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, headquartered in Berlin, said its analysis showed the attack was most likely a war crime.

“Everything points to the fact that Russian air forces deliberately bombed the theater as a civilian object and the civilians who sought refuge there.”

Targeted drone attacks on Russian oil refineries

A drone attack, which authorities said carried out by Ukraine, caused a fire at a Russian oil refinery, which burned for several hours on Saturday before being brought under control.

According to Interfax Russia’s emergency ministry said the “open burning” at the Syzran refinery in the Samara region southeast of Moscow had been stopped, but the blaze was not fully extinguished.

A drone attack on another nearby refinery, Novokuibyshevsky was thwarted, the local governor said.

A Ukrainian source told the Reuters news agency that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency had struck the two Rosneft refineries and another named Kuibyshevsky.

Russian media have not reported a strike on the Kuibyshevsky refinery, which is located in the city of Samara.

Russia says Ukrainian shelling killed 2 in Belgorod

A Ukrainian attack on the Russian city of Belgorod killed two people in the latest in a series of cross-border attacks, Russian authorities said on Saturday.

“A man was driving a lorry when a shell hit him, after which the vehicle crashed into a passenger bus. The people on it were not injured,” the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on the Telegram messaging app.

“Another woman was killed in a parking lot where she and her son came to feed the dogs. Medics are fighting for her son’s life,” he added.

Russia’s defense ministry earlier said it had thwarted attempts by “Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups” to enter the country from Ukraine’s Sumy region.

It followed an armed incursion claimed by Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin on Tuesday in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.

lo/wd (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)