In the area between Belgorod and Ukraine, large Russian forces gathered as the invasion prepared.
That Ukraine sees the city as a military target is therefore logical.
But the Ukrainian military can hardly do more than a single pin inside Russia, of dubious value in the war as a whole.
The decisive factor is how well the Ukrainian defense manages to withstand Russia's bombing and the onslaught that Russian ground forces are now intensifying against eastern and southern Ukraine.
Defend Ukraine into death
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declares that all Ukrainian forces and all Ukrainian civilians, including himself, are prepared to defend Ukraine to the death.
It is clear that Russia's forces have met with far greater resistance than the Kremlin had expected.
Now Russia is apparently trying to find a contingency plan, and perhaps even a way out of the war so that President Putin can, after all, call it a victory in the "special military operation" against the "drug addicts and Nazis" who, according to Putin, rule Ukraine.
Important oil depot destroyed
But then who is responsible for how Russia's armed forces work?
In the end, of course, the country's authoritarian ruler, Vladimir Putin.
So if the information that Ukraine with a couple of helicopters manages to destroy an important oil depot inside Russia is true, it shows not only that the Russian air defense is ineffective but, probably in any case, that the whole Russian war machine - with Putin at the helm - is resting basic.