Ukraine has launched what it described as its biggest aerial attack against Russia in a barrage that Moscow said included more than a dozen American and British cruise missiles as well as about 150 drones.
Explosions and fires were reported at chemical plants, energy facilities and other sites connected to Russia’s military-industrial complex in several cities far from the border.
“There’s a drone flying above me. There it is … Look, look!” one man said in an online video shortly before an explosion in the Tula region, about 120 miles south of Moscow.
“That’s a rocket … you can’t escape your fate,” another man said as he watched a blast light up the night sky at an unspecified location inside Russia.
Ukraine’s general staff said the attack was the “most massive” since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion almost three years ago and had struck targets up to 700 miles inside Russia.
Flames and thick smoke billowed into the sky when a drone crashed into a gas storage tank near Kazan, a city about 600 miles from Ukraine, while powerful blasts were reported at chemical plants in the Tula region as well as in Bryansk, close to the border between the two warring countries. A huge blaze also erupted at an oil refinery in the Saratov region, about 370 miles southeast of Moscow.
A munitions storage facility holding guided bombs and missiles at the Engels air base was also hit by drones, a Ukrainian SBU security service source told Reuters. The facility, which is also in the Saratov region, serves as a base for Russian nuclear-capable strategic bombers. Last week Ukraine said it had hit an oil depot that supplies the base, causing a huge fire that took five days to extinguish.
Russian strategic bombers at the Engels air base, which was targeted in the attacks
AP
“Each damaged ammunition depot, oil refinery, oil depot or chemical plant is a painful blow to Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine,” the SBU source said.
The Russian defence ministry said its forces had shot down six British Storm Shadow missiles and six American Atacms missiles over the Bryansk region. It said another two Storm Shadows had been destroyed over the Black Sea. The claims could not be verified.
Shot, a Russian Telegram channel with links to the security services, said Ukraine had fired more than 200 drones, a record for a single barrage. “The actions of the Kyiv regime, supported by its western curators, will not go unanswered,” the Russian defence ministry said.
Russia has launched missiles at Ukraine on a daily basis since the start of its invasion, killing thousands of civilians and destroying entire towns and cities. The attack came just days before Donald Trump returns to the White House. There are concerns in Kyiv that the president-elect could cut US weapons supplies to Ukraine unless it surrenders swathes of territory to Russia.
Residents of Dnipro, Ukraine, survey the damage caused by a Russian missile strike last year
REUTERS
President Biden gave permission for Ukraine to use western missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia in November, prompting warnings from Moscow that the move could trigger nuclear war. Two days later Ukraine used Atacms against a Russian military facility in the Bryansk region.
That attack was followed swiftly by the launch by Moscow of a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile called Oreshnik, or Hazel Tree, at a defence factory in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine. Officials in Kyiv said the missile lacked an explosive charge.
However, President Putin said last month that Russia was selecting targets for new Oreshnik launches and that Moscow would warn Ukrainian civilians shortly before an attack. He claimed that the impact of several fully armed Oreshnik missiles would be equivalent in destructive power to a nuclear missile.