hours after ... retaliation

I press X for doubt. With a strict top-down command chain I don't believe the response could come that fast. My conspiracy monkey brain thinks that's the strike on Belgorod was to prevent that planned strike from Belgorod, a part of a long-going shelling, rather than the other way. They said they struck mil targets there, so maybe that was the point, and maybe they prevented some of the shelling of Kharkiv. If you turn it that way, it seems more sequential.