Moscow mentioned it shot down two Ukrainian missiles over southwestern Russia on Friday, together with one which fell and exploded in a metropolis middle — apparently uncommon situations of Ukraine utilizing such highly effective weapons to assault targets inside Russia.

Coming as Ukraine, inside its personal borders, steps up its counteroffensive towards the Russian invaders, the missile assaults may sign a extra aggressive effort to increase a struggle that till now has introduced demise and destruction virtually completely to Ukrainian territory.

Russian officers mentioned one downed missile fell within the metropolis of Taganrog, about 80 miles southeast of the closest entrance traces, injuring no less than 9 individuals, none severely, and damaging some buildings, and that the opposite fell in “a deserted area” close to the town of Azov, which lies some 25 miles farther from the preventing.

Video and images circulated by Russian state media and native retailers confirmed the aftermath of a blast in Taganrog, a port metropolis on the Sea of Azov, together with piles of rubble and blown-out home windows and storage doorways. The regional governor, Vasily Golubev, mentioned the detonation hit close to an artwork museum and a restaurant within the metropolis middle.

Earlier Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry mentioned it had additionally shot down a drone aimed on the Moscow area.

On Friday night, no less than one missile strike within the metropolis of Dnipro, in central Ukraine, broken a high-rise condominium constructing and an workplace of the Ukrainian safety service, and accidents have been reported. “Russian missile terror again,” President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on social media. He added, “These bastards will answer.”

Neither accepting nor denying accountability for the explosions in Russia, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Mr. Zelensky, mentioned that “everything happening in Russia, including Taganrog, is an unconditional consequence of the large-scale war initiated by Russia.”

A high Ukrainian safety official, Oleksiy Danilov, in an announcement mentioned, “The events in Taganrog are nothing more than completely illiterate actions of the operators of Russian air defense systems.” But there was a touch of sarcasm in his assertion, which appeared to intentionally echo the Kremlin denial of accountability for a missile strike final weekend on a cathedral in Odesa, which it blamed on “illiterate actions of Ukrainian defense forces.”

Ukraine has often declined to publicly verify or deny assaults inside Russia, that are unnerving to Kyiv’s Western allies, however officers typically acknowledge them on the situation of anonymity, or nicely after the very fact.

Both sides reported continued heavy preventing in southern Ukraine, the place Ukrainian forces have made piecemeal progress within the counteroffensive that started final month and intensified this week, advancing a couple of miles alongside two axes by means of daunting Russian defenses.

Kyiv hopes to punch by means of and get behind Russia’s community of minefields, bunkers, trenches and tank traps, the place the occupation forces could be rather more weak, and drive a wedge by means of the territory seized by Moscow.

But a extra fast objective, Ukrainians say, is to penetrate deeply sufficient to get inside artillery vary of extra Russian targets. The Western cell rocket launchers just like the American-made HIMARS, which have been first equipped to Ukraine final yr, took a heavy toll on Russian provide depots, command posts and concentrations of troops and automobiles far behind the entrance traces, forcing the Russians to maneuver them dozens of miles farther again.

The United States has equipped satellite-guided HIMARS rockets with a spread of about 50 miles, however Ukrainian forces have a restricted variety of the launchers and, in an effort to guard them, want to maintain them far again from the entrance line, limiting their attain. Ukraine’s forces this yr have acquired Western missiles with much longer ranges, however they’re even fewer in quantity.

Kyiv’s commanders are keen to increase the attain of rocket artillery and traditional artillery. Ukraine hopes to push all the way in which to the Sea of Azov shore, slicing the “land bridge” from Russia to Russian-occupied Crimea, however an advance even a part of that distance would put your entire width of the bridge inside vary of Ukrainian artillery. The solely different street or rail connection Russia has to maneuver troops and gear out and in of Crimea is the Kerch Strait bridge, which Ukraine has attacked twice.

“The main task we face now, in addition to moving forward, is, of course, to weaken the enemy’s ability to defend itself,” Hanna Malyar, the deputy minister of protection, mentioned on Ukrainian nationwide tv. “And in fact, this is what we are doing now.”

Brig. Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky, the commander of Ukraine’s army preventing within the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia areas, in contrast the counteroffensive to a boxing match, saying that Ukraine intends to strike with longer-range weapons to “hold the opponent at arm’s length” with the intention to keep away from shut fight. That represents one thing of a shift after the early days of the counteroffensive incurred heavy casualties and made little progress.

The United States and a few of its allies, cautious of being drawn instantly into the struggle, have insisted that their weapons not be used to strike inside Russia’s internationally acknowledged borders, although such assaults quantity to a tiny fraction of these Russia has made in Ukraine.

For these assaults, Ukraine has used artillery, modified jet-powered surveillance drones left over from the Soviet period that have been filled with explosives, bombs planted by people and new, light-weight aerial attack drones, which it has used to hold out a number of current strikes in Moscow and different websites. Except for the jet drones, these are much less damaging than the missiles that Russia mentioned have been utilized in Friday’s assault, which have warheads weighing a number of hundred kilos.

But missile assaults on Russia have been uncommon. In July 2022, Russia said that four civilians were killed after Russian air defenses shot down Ukrainian missiles over the town of Belgorod close to the Ukrainian border. Mr. Golubev said earlier this month that Russian air defenses had shot down a missile within the Rostov area, injuring nobody.

The Russian protection ministry mentioned each missiles it shot down on Friday have been variations of the Soviet-era S-200 antiaircraft missile that had been modified to strike floor targets, a sort of weapon that each side have used since Russia’s full-scale invasion 17 months in the past. Depending on the mannequin, the S-200 has a spread of as much as 190 miles.

Air defenses have shot down lots of the missiles fired on this struggle, in order that they have accomplished little or no hurt. But quite a lot of occasions, missiles that have been intercepted midair and missed their supposed targets as an alternative fell and did damage elsewhere. Russian officers didn’t say the place the missiles have been aimed on Friday, however Taganrog has two army airfields, in addition to vital port and industrial websites.

The Kremlin had little fast touch upon the assault. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, mentioned President Vladimir V. Putin was briefed on the incidents at a summit assembly with African leaders in St. Petersburg.

In Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky marked Ukraine’s Statehood Day with a speech reaffirming for his nation an identification and historical past separate from Russia’s, which Mr. Putin has denied. The Ukrainian chief additionally took intention at a small however symbolic cultural division.

The Russian Orthodox Church is without doubt one of the few establishments on the planet nonetheless utilizing the previous Julian calendar, so its Christmas, Dec. 25, falls on Jan. 7 within the Gregorian calendar that’s utilized by a lot of the world. Orthodox church buildings in another international locations have switched to a calendar in keeping with the Gregorian.

The Orthodox church in Ukraine was a part of the Russian Orthodox Church till a couple of years in the past, when an impartial Ukrainian church was established — and adopted the up to date calendar. That created a schism, with a some monks and parishes following leaders in Kyiv and others — more and more handled in Ukraine as a subversive ingredient — nonetheless answering to the patriarch in Moscow.

Mr. Zelensky introduced on Friday that Ukraine will now acknowledge Dec. 25 as Christmas.