Moscow accuses Ukraine of biggest drone attack so far on Russian soil
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine sent waves of drones deep into western Russia in nighttime attacks that lasted more than four hours and struck military assets, Russian officials and media reports said Wednesday.
The drones hit an airport near Russia’s border with Estonia and Latvia, causing a huge blaze and damaging four Il-76 transport aircraft, which can carry heavy machinery and troops, Russian state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency officials.
With at least six regions of Russia targeted, the barrage appeared to be the most extensive Ukrainian drone attack on Russian soil since the war began 18 months ago. The Kremlin has repeatedly accused the Ukrainian military of cross-border incursions on the Belgorod region of Russia and of launching drones toward Moscow.
There was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials, who usually refuse to claim responsibility for any attacks inside Russia. The Kremlin’s forces, meanwhile, hit Ukraine’s capital with drones and missiles during the night in what Ukrainian officials called a “massive, combined attack” that killed two people.
Aerial attacks on Russian soil have escalated in recent months as Ukraine pursues a counteroffensive to drive the invading forces out of its territory. Ukraine has increasingly targeted Russian military assets behind the front lines in the country’s east and south.
Ukraine has also claimed to have used sea drones against Russian ships in the Black Sea. Ukrainian media have said that Kyiv saboteurs used drones last week to hit bomber aircraft parked at air bases deep inside Russia.
Russian mercenary boss and ‘Putin’s chef’ Yevgeny Prigozhin is buried in private following his death in a plane crash, ending his tumultuous journey.
The airport in the Pskov region, about 400 miles north of the Ukraine border and 400 miles west of Moscow, suffered the most damage in the overnight attacks.
Smoke from the massive fire billowed over the city of Pskov, the region’s namesake capital, images posted on social media showed. Videos showed loud bangs and flashes punctuating the night, along with the crackle of air-defense systems and tracers climbing into the dark sky.
Pskov regional Gov. Mikhail Vedernikov ordered all flights to and from the airport canceled for the day to assess damage, which he later said was not major, adding that normal operations would resume Thursday.
Other regions hit in the barrage were Oryol, 240 miles south of Moscow; Ryazan, 120 miles southeast of Moscow; Kaluga, 120 miles southwest of Moscow; Bryansk, which borders Ukraine; and the region surrounding Moscow, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Minor damage was reported in those areas.
Ukraine media say a pair of drone attacks on air bases deep inside Russia were the work of Ukrainian saboteurs backed by intelligence services.
Three main Moscow-region airports — Sheremetyevo, Vnukovo and Domodedovo — temporarily halted operations.
The Associated Press was unable to confirm whether the drones were launched from Ukraine or from inside Russia.
Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, said his country now has drones with a range of up to 300 miles, though he did not claim responsibility for any attacks inside Russia or on Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
“If you look carefully at the news recently, in general, every day there [is] news about long-range drones that hit various targets both in occupied Crimea and in the territory of Russia,” Fedorov told the AP in a recent interview. ”So in this regard, let’s say, that more or less a mass production of these drones has appeared.”
Despite a government-ordered evacuation amid approaching fighting, most residents in areas around Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine have refused to leave.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the Russian military would undoubtedly analyze “how this was done in order to take appropriate measures to prevent these situations in the future.”
Firing at distant Russian targets could reflect a Ukrainian tactic of stretching the Kremlin’s military resources as Moscow scrambles to buttress its air defenses, said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for Military Aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“Putting air-defense systems there means you can’t put them somewhere else,” he said. “This draws on Russian capability.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine was relying on foreign help because the drones “simply would not be able to fly such a distance without carefully researched information from Western satellites.”
The Kremlin says ‘deliberate wrongdoing’ is among the possible causes of the plane crash that killed mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin last week.
Russian state TV largely ignored the strikes, aside from a brief mention of the Pskov fire. But Russia 1’s popular political talk show “60 Minutes” opened with the attacks. It showed videos of the Pskov fire and blasts in Bryansk that had flooded social media, along with a soundtrack of sinister music.
Russia, meanwhile, also used drones as well as missiles in its biggest bombardment of Ukraine’s capital in months, Ukrainian authorities said.
Two security guards, ages 26 and 36, were killed and another person was injured by falling debris, Serhiy Popko, the head of the Kyiv military administration, wrote on Telegram.
Russia launched Shahed exploding drones at the city from various directions and then followed with missiles from Tu-95MS strategic aircraft, Popko said. It was unclear how many were launched, but Popko called the attack the biggest on the capital since the spring.
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In the aftermath, Kyiv resident Iryna Oblat pointed to debris in the street and shattered windows in surrounding buildings.
“Look where it hit, look what happened to the house,” she told the Associated Press. “Garages are on fire. We don’t know how many cars and garages were destroyed because firefighters and police won’t let us in.”
Also early Wednesday, Russian-installed officials in Crimea reported repelling an attack of drones targeting the harbor of the port city of Sevastopol. Russian officials blamed Ukraine for past drone attacks that hit fuel depots and airfields in Crimea or Russian-held areas of Ukraine.
Explosions in Ukraine were also reported in the southern city of Odesa and the Cherkasy region.
Ukraine’s air defenses destroyed 28 cruise missiles and 15 of 16 Iranian-made Shahed attack drones targeting the capital and multiple regions across the country overnight, the Ukrainian air force said in its daily Telegram update Wednesday.
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