In the dead of night, two massive Russian ballistic missiles slammed into the very centre of Balakliya, a small city in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region just 70 km from the Russian border, turning sleepy residential streets into a hellscape of twisted metal, shattered glass and burning buildings as terrified families were jolted from their beds by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake.

The first missile struck a busy intersection near shops and apartment blocks, instantly killing three civilians who had no time to run; the second detonated minutes later only hundreds of metres away, spraying deadly shrapnel across a wider area and trapping screaming residents beneath collapsed roofs while fires raged unchecked in the freezing November darkness.

Among the ten confirmed wounded rushed to hospital were two children — a 14-year-old girl with severe shrapnel wounds to her legs and a 12-year-old boy fighting for life with head trauma — along with elderly residents and passers-by, their blood staining the snow-dusted pavement as medics in bulletproof vests worked under floodlights amid fears of follow-up strikes.

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Vitali Karabanov, head of Balakliya’s military administration, described scenes of utter devastation, confirming the death toll at dawn and warning it could still rise as rescue teams with sniffer dogs comb through the rubble of partially destroyed five-storey buildings, pulling out survivors wrapped in blankets and carrying the lifeless bodies of those who never stood a chance.

This latest atrocity is part of Russia’s brutal winter campaign to break Ukrainian morale, with Kharkiv region suffering near-nightly missile and drone barrages even as ground troops inch forward village by village; Governor Oleg Synegubov condemned the “deliberate terror against civilians,” vowing that every strike only hardens Ukraine’s resolve as the war approaches its grim 1,000th day.

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