The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case for a terrorist act (Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) after the shelling of Belgorod by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on February 15. The Chairman of the Investigative Committee ordered, as part of the investigation, to identify all those involved in the crime, including “those who gave criminal orders to shell the civilian population,” the department reported.

According to the governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, as a result of the attack on the city, seven people were killed and 19 civilians were injured, including four children.

“Now there is no one to congratulate”

Shells fired from Ukrainian territory hit the southern part of the city. One of them fell near the sports stadium. This place is popular among local residents: children, athletes and pensioners who practice race walking come here for a walk.

One of the victims of the Ukrainian army was a one-year-old girl Lera Chikharin. A friend of the family told RT that at the time of the shelling, the grandmother was walking with the child. The woman received shrapnel wounds and was operated on in the hospital. The girl died on the spot: a piece of shrapnel flew into the stroller where she was sitting.

A week before her death, Lera had her first birthday, the baby’s uncle told RT. He himself could not come to the family holiday and planned to visit his niece on February 17. 

“Now there is no one to congratulate and no one to give a gift to. I regret that I didn’t get to visit my brother often; the last time I held Lerochka in my arms was a month ago,” the interlocutor said.

The six-year-old sister of the deceased girl was in kindergarten at the time of the shelling; she was not injured.

  • A resident of Belgorod sent her family a photo of a fragment that flew near her.

  • © Photo from personal archive

During the strike, not far from Lera, eight-year-old Anya (name changed) was walking at the stadium along with her grandmother, 63-year-old Tatyana. The fragments flew into the girl's stomach, Tatyana received wounds to her hip and neck.

A woman who saw the victims from the window of her apartment came to their aid.

“She doesn’t know my daughter or mother-in-law, she just saw that the child was lying in blood, ran up to her, called an ambulance and accompanied her to the hospital,” the girl’s mother Alena told RT. “Immediately after the shelling I was able to call my mother-in-law, she said: “We were wounded.” And already in the hospital, when I came running, I met this woman who helped my family.”

Tatiana and Anya were operated on, both of them were in serious condition. On February 16, eight-year-old Anya was brought to Moscow for treatment.

In total, four people were hospitalized from Belgorod to the capital. Two adults and a child are in serious condition, another child is in a moderate condition, Assistant Minister of Health Alexey Kuznetsov told RT. According to him, all four victims survived the journey from Belgorod normally, doctors have already begun diagnostics and treatment.

“The children are very sad”

Another shell fell near a local shopping center. The moment of the impact was caught on a surveillance camera.

One of the dead was 20-year-old student of the Belgorod State Institute of Arts and Culture Mohammed Shenani, who came to study in Russia from Syria last year. On September 1 of this year, he entered the Faculty of Social, Cultural, Information and Library Activities, and before that he studied literature and the Russian language for a year, the university told RT.

On February 15, Shenani did not visit classes: while the students are in distance learning. He went into a grocery store in a shopping center when a shell fell nearby.  

  • Mohammed Shenani came to Russia from Syria to study.

  • © Social networks

Now university employees, through the Syrian Embassy, ​​are trying to contact the relatives of the deceased in order to resolve the issue of transporting the body to their homeland.

At the same place on February 15, a BelSU employee, 44-year-old Lyubov Gubkina, died. A woman was traveling with her mother to her mother-in-law’s funeral and stopped shopping on the way. Lyubov’s mother is in intensive care in serious condition, her husband was also wounded, RT found out.

Lyubov is survived by sons aged ten and 26, as well as a 16-year-old daughter. The eldest son is a graduate student at the same university. The youngest child is in Kaluga, in a children's recreation center, where he was sent along with other schoolchildren to recover after the brutal shelling of the city on December 30. Until the boy was informed about the death of his mother.

34-year-old Dmitry Mazikin was leaving the parking lot next to the shopping center when he saw a shell flying across the sky. The man quickly got his bearings and tried to climb into the back seat of the car to hide. A shrapnel pierced the car and hit the shoes. The man turned to doctors with a severe bruise. 

The blow to the shopping center was so strong that those who were in their homes in the neighboring neighborhoods were also injured.

  • Marina Ploskina and her children took refuge from the shrapnel in the house, but the family’s pets died.

  • © Photo from personal archive

27-year-old Arthur was sleeping after a 24-hour shift when his bedroom windows were blown out by a blast wave.

“A piece of glass flew into my right buttock. My wife called an ambulance, and while she was driving, the neighbors gave me first aid: they took out the fragment and treated the wound,” the young man told RT.

Fortunately, no people in Marina Ploskina’s family were injured, but their pets, who were in the courtyard of her private house, died.

“First we heard a siren, and then suddenly there was a loud sound, and the shock wave threw the children and me somewhere to the side. When I came to my senses, I saw that the children were alive and unharmed. And then I saw the bodies of animals in the yard,” the woman recalls. - This is a big loss for us. Bertha, our beloved Samoyed, was three years old, Kex was two. The children miss them very much. We all suffered a concussion, but refused hospitalization.”

  • A shopping center near which a Ukrainian shell fell.

  • RIA News

  • © Anton Vergun

Back on February 15, after the missile warning signal was canceled in the city, residents began bringing flowers and candles to the steps of the shopping center to honor the memory of the victims. Builders and city service employees quickly sheathed the damaged building with plywood and cleaned up the area around it so that those who wanted to lay flowers at the spontaneous memorial could go to the porch.

It was possible to avoid large casualties thanks to the work of air defense, which intercepted 14 projectiles of the RM-70 Vampire multiple launch rocket system launched from the territory of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.

“Duty air defense systems destroyed 14 missiles over the territory of the Belgorod region,” the department noted.