MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. A total of 61 civilians have been killed and another 35 suffered injuries in the Russia-controlled part of the Kharkov Region since the beginning of the year, Yevgeny Lisnyak, deputy head of the region’s military-civilian administration, said at a briefing.

"Shelling attacks on residential areas in the Kharkov Region destroyed 132 private houses, damaging over 500 households and 117 transport vehicles. Ukraine’s military aggression affected 96 civilians: 61 people were killed and 35 suffered injuries," he specified.

According to Lisnyak, the regional military-civilian administration’s department of interior affairs created a special agency to promptly document Ukrainian attacks. Its members have launched criminal investigations into 116 acts of Ukrainian aggression against civilians in the part of the Kharkov Region controlled by the administration. About 2,000 shelling attacks by the Ukrainian army were recorded in the reporting period.