A Ukrainian missile strike on the Russian city of Belgorod and the surrounding district on the morning of July 3 killed a civilian woman and caused widespread power and water outages, the regional operational headquarters said. Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov said the woman was in a car when she was hit by shrapnel and died before an ambulance arrived. Several other vehicles were damaged.
The strike sparked a fire at an infrastructure facility and caused “serious damage” to energy infrastructure, the headquarters said. The resulting power outage cut electricity to a “significant number” of water supply facilities, leaving most of the city without water. Crews began connecting wells to backup power sources to refill reservoirs and restore supply.
The Insider reported that the strike hit the Frunzenskaya electrical substation near the village of Dragunskoye in Belgorod district, though authorities did not confirm this. Local outlet Pepel, cited by Deutsche Welle, wrote that the attack targeted the Yuzhnaya substation and a substation at the Energo thermal power plant, both of which caught fire. Monitoring resources, according to Dialog.ua, suggested the Michurinskaya thermal power plant may have been hit. The Insider noted that this plant had already been attacked in February, but that strike did not affect the city’s heat or power supply.
Ukrainian forces carried out similar strikes on Belgorod’s energy system during the winter, describing them as retaliation for Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. On the night of July 2, Russian forces struck Kyiv in what Mayor Vitali Klitschko called the most massive attack since the start of the war. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said 30 people were killed and about 100 wounded. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strike was a response to “terrorist attacks by the Kyiv regime” against Russian civilian infrastructure.