Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, warned of potential blackouts on Saturday during reports of a Ukrainian missile strike.
The Belgorod region borders eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk, Kharkiv and Sumy regions and has witnessed frequent hostilities, including occasional ground incursions that started in May 2023.
Gladkov, writing on Telegram, warned of a potential Ukrainian missile strike at around 7 p.m. local time on Saturday.
At around 7:33 p.m., Gladkov said air defenses had been activated and reported damage to some properties in the city of Belgorod, adding that some settlements in the region were also affected.
“Debris falling in Belgorod ignited a fire in debris; fire crews are working to extinguish the blaze. Windows were shattered at a commercial building, and the roof and façade were damaged. Two cars were damaged,” Gladkov wrote.
“In the village of Tavrovo in the Belgorod district, the body of a passenger car was damaged, and in the village of Dubovoye, the roof of a private home was breached,” he added.
However, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported no missile strikes from Ukraine – only drones – in its daily update at the time of publication.
Close to 15 minutes later, Gladkov warned of possible “short-term rolling power outages.”
Local Telegram channel Pepel corroborated Gladkov’s blackout reports, noting that street lights were out while traffic lights were working an hour after Gladkov’s warning.
Citing Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov, Pepel later wrote that street lights were turned off to “reduce the load on power facilities and preserve the power for residents.”
But Gladkov, prior to issuing the missile warning, also accused Pepel of spreading news that “[destabilizes] the situation in the region” and named it among a list of undesirable channels, an accusation the channel denied on Saturday evening.
“But there are channels that the enemy is creating in order to use them to destabilize the situation in the region, to collect and transmit information through them, providing assistance to foreign states, thereby acting against the security of our country,” Gladkov wrote.
Pepel fought back with a statement accusing Gladkov of concealing the real degree of damage dealt to Belgorod in recent strikes.
“Everything points to the governor’s post being part of an attack on ‘Pepel,’ which has been ongoing for four days now,” the outlet wrote.
“Prior to this, after the introduction of censorship, ‘Pepel’ caught Vyacheslav Gladkov in lies several times. For example, the governor claimed that debris from a downed drone fell on a house in Stary Oskol, while ‘Pepel’ is the only channel to publish footage showing that an air defense missile struck the house,” it added.
Pepel also published photos reportedly depicting damage dealt to the Luch thermal power plant on Oct. 6 after blackouts were reported on the day following a Ukrainian strike.
Gladkov later issued another update of a Ukrainian drone strike at around 3:47 a.m. on Sunday, with the Russian Ministry of Defense claiming 15 drones were downed in the region overnight.