Ukraine drones hit deep inside Russian territory

As Kyiv disables four Russian planes, Moscow launches a missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital.

Firefighters extinguish a fire in a house hit in a missile attack in a village outside Kyiv on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

Ukraine launched its largest drone attack on military targets across Russia since the war began, disabling several military aircraft in a strike on the Pskov air base, as Moscow unleashed the most sustained missile barrage on the Ukrainian capital in months.

While Ukraine lacks the long-range cruise and ballistic missiles that Russia frequently fires into Ukrainian cities, destroying power stations, hotels, ports and residential buildings, Kyiv has developed an increasingly efficient force of domestically engineered strike drones that can travel several hundred miles into Russia.

Several dozen such drones were launched overnight, heading to the Moscow, Kaluga, Orel, Ryazan, Bryansk, Tula and Pskov regions, in addition to Russian-occupied Crimea, according to Russian officials. Additional drone strikes followed a similar pattern Wednesday. While most of these drones were shot down, the attack on Pskov, more than 640km from Ukraine, proved to be among the most significant Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil since Moscow started the war 18 months ago.

Four Il-76 military transport aircraft were hit on the Pskov airfield, and the city’s civilian airport shut down for the day, according to state news agency TASS. Another Russian news agency said six planes had been damaged. Andriy Yusov, the spokesman for Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, told Ukrainian media four Il-76 aircraft had been destroyed and several additional planes damaged.

Footage posted by Russian media showed at least two planes ablaze and thick plumes of smoke engulfing the facility, with the sound of secondary explosions suggesting that ammunition was burning. Local media reported that a nearby base of Russian special forces was also struck. There were no reports of casualties.

The Il-76 planes based in Pskov were supposed to be used in February 2022 to disembark Russian airborne troops in the Hostomel airport near Kyiv, enabling a rapid capture of the Ukrainian capital. While Russia managed to drop heliborne forces into the airport on the first day of the war, Ukrainian defenders quickly damaged the landing strip and the Il-76 carrying reinforcements and armoured vehicles never made it to Hostomel.

On Wednesday night, Russian authorities reported new Ukrainian drone strikes in Bryansk and said a Ukrainian missile was intercepted near the Crimean town of Feodosia.

Russian officials sought to play down Wednesday’s attacks. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the attacks showed “the terrorist nature of the Kyiv regime” and would have been impossible without intelligence provided by the West. She said Russia would respond.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin was receiving prompt updates on the attacks. Russian military experts were investigating where the attacks against Pskov airport were launched from in order to respond, he added.

In Kyiv, two security guards at an industrial facility were killed in the Russian barrage, according to the city’s military administration, and a fire erupted in a shopping mall as a result of falling debris. “Kyiv has not suffered from such a powerful attack since the spring,” said the administration’s head, Serhiy Popko. Ukraine’s military said all 28 cruise missiles and 15 out of 16 Shahed drones were shot down by air defences nationwide.

Lacking modern jet fighters of its own and barred by the US and allies from using Western-provided weapons on Russian soil, Ukraine has turned to drones to dent Russia’s overwhelming superiority in aircraft. Over the past year, Kyiv has likely disabled more Russian planes at their home bases in Russia than in combat, according to military analysts.

On August 19, a Ukrainian drone strike destroyed at least one Russian supersonic Tu-22M3 bomber, the kind of aircraft that is used to fire cruise missiles at Ukraine, in the Soltsy base in northern Russia’s Novgorod region. Two other Russian airfields were attacked by Ukrainian drones in the past two days, according to Russian military bloggers. Last year, Ukrainian drones destroyed Russian strategic bombers in Ryazan and Engels, while a Ukrainian missile strike caused the loss of several jets at the main Russian naval aviation base in Crimea.

Drone attacks on the Moscow region have also become commonplace. While they have resulted in limited direct damage, Russian aviation authorities have been temporarily shutting down air traffic in Moscow airports almost every morning in recent weeks, causing dozens of flights to be diverted to other cities. Another such shutdown occurred Wednesday.

In the city of Bryansk, one of the Ukrainian drones hit the compound of Kremniy El, one of Russia’s largest producers of microelectronics used in missiles and other weapons, causing a fire, according to local media. Hours later, another Ukrainian drone hit near the TV tower in the city, and Russian state media reported the roof of the building housing the local branch of the Investigative Committee, the main federal investigating authority in Russia, was damaged. In the Kaluga region, a Ukrainian drone struck a fuel storage facility, causing a fire, according to the local governor.

In Belgorod, a region that borders Ukraine and has faced a barrage of attacks in recent weeks, the governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported around 110 strikes by mortar shells and artillery on the region in the past 24 hours.

The Wall Street Journal