By Micah Jonah
January 10, 2026
Around 600,000 residents in Russia’s Belgorod region are without electricity, heating and water following a missile strike that local authorities blamed on Ukrainian forces, the regional governor said on Saturday.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, Governor of the border region adjoining Ukraine, said in a statement on Telegram that emergency teams were working to restore essential services but described the situation as extremely difficult.
Footage filmed in Belgorod city showed widespread power outages, with street lights switched off, residents navigating dark streets using car headlights and handheld torches.
The Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and had a pre war population of about 1.5million, has faced frequent attacks since Russia deployed tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Throughout the conflict, Russia has carried out repeated strikes on Ukraine’s energy and heating infrastructure, triggering rolling blackouts across the country. An overnight attack earlier this week left roughly half of Kyiv’s apartment buildings without heating.
The latest disruption comes as temperatures across large parts of Russia and Ukraine remain well below freezing, raising concerns about the humanitarian impact of prolonged outages during winter.
