Russian forces fired S-300 missiles at eastern Ukraine with one hitting a village and killing 11 people there, including five children, the regional governor said.

"The main blow was dealt to Pokrovsk and Rivne in the community of Myrnograd," the head of the Donetsk region, Vadim Filashkin, said on Telegram.

He released photographs showing rescue workers working through the debris of the attack which damaged six houses in Pokrovsk and another in nearby Rivne.

According to the emergency services the toll could rise with six people, including two children, believed to be under the rubble of one of the buildings.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced the attacks saying "the Russians just hit ordinary residential buildings, private houses."

He assured that no Russian strike "will go without consequence."

The town of Pokrovsk, which had a population of 60,000 before the war, had already been hit by a deadly bombardment last August, which left nine people dead and 82 injured.

The town is around 50 kilometers from the front line of the fighting.

Elsewhere in Ukraine, one adult and two children were injured in shelling in the Kherson region in the south.

One person was killed in Toretsk, near Bakhmut, and another was killed and two injured in Nikopol, in the east, according to the respective regional authorities.

Kyiv hits back

In the Russian-occupied territories of eastern Ukraine, two people were killed by Ukrainian shelling in Makiivka and Gorlovka, an attack that also left several people injured, according to the local authorities installed by Moscow.

Russia on Saturday also said its forces had shot down four Ukrainian missiles over Moscow-annexed Crimea overnight.

Russia also said that it had destroyed six Ukrainian Neptune naval missiles over the Black Sea.

Mykola Oleshchuk, Ukraine's air force commander, said on social media that it had hit the Saki airbase in western Crimea.

Russia said Saturday that it would cancel Orthodox Christmas midnight masses in the city of Belgorod near the Ukraine border, a day after officials offered to evacuate worried residents amid increasing attacks by Kyiv.

Belgorod has been hit with near daily Ukrainian attacks in recent days, the deadliest of which killed 25 people on 30 December.

Russia celebrates Orthodox Christmas on 7 January and midnight masses are held on the night of 6 January.

The mayor of Belgorod, Valentin Demidov, said on social media he agreed with local church leaders that "night masses in Belgorod would be cancelled in connection to the operational situation."

Wives protest

In Moscow, wives of Russians mobilized to fight in Ukraine symbolically laid flowers Saturday at the flame of the unknown soldier right beneath the walls of the Kremlin and demanded the return of their husbands from the battle front.

Anger has been growing for months among relatives of reservists who President Vladimir Putin mobilized in September 2022, seven months after the initial invasion of Ukraine.

Some 15 women brave the winter cold to place red flowers at the site in the heart of the capital.

"We want to draw the authorities' attention and that of the public to our appeal. We have tried several means. We made a written appeal to lawmakers, officials, administrations — but we were not heard," Maria, a 47-year-old sales manager, whose husband was mobilized in November 2022, told Agence France-Presse.

"It's not fair. They are civilians, they are not soldiers. Our husbands can't stay there," she added.

Maria Semyonova, a legal assistant, urged authorities to "negotiate peace" in Ukraine at a protest where police did not intervene.

Usually, protests against the conflict are swiftly and resolutely nipped in the bud with the subject a delicate issue for the Kremlin.

According to Putin, 244,000 Russians have been mobilized to fight in Ukraine in a total force 617,000 strong.