Ukraine is also increasingly competing with Moscow in Russian airspace

In addition to the battle on the ground, which has been going on for a year and a half, along a front of a thousand kilometers, Russia and Ukraine are increasingly embroiled in an air war. In a massive drone attack on Russian territory, in which six regions were bombarded in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, transport planes of the Russian Air Force were hit at an air base near the Western Russian city of Pskov, not far from the border with Estonia. According to the Tass news agency, four Ilyushin aircraft of the type IL-76 were destroyed.

On images circulating on social media a large sea of ​​flames can be seen at the military airfield of Pskov. The city is located about 700 kilometers north of the Russian border with Ukraine. At the same time, in the city of Bryansk, in southwestern Russia, a fire broke out after a drone attack at the company Kremni EL, a major manufacturer of microelectronics, including for the Russian defense.

Ukrainian attack drones were shot down in four other Russian regions, including Moscow, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. These were the largest attacks on Russian territory since the country invaded Ukraine with a massive force in February last year. As far as is known, there were no casualties in the attacks.

In addition, the Moscow-installed governor of occupied Crimea reported drone strikes from the sea in the bay near the port city of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Whether damage was caused was not known to Ukrainian media around noon on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian authorities generally do not comment on attacks on Russian targets. The Russian Foreign Ministry assured on Wednesday afternoon that the Ukrainian drone attacks “will not go unpunished”.

Attacks getting bolder

The recent attacks show that the Ukrainian armed forces are getting bolder in their counter-offensive against the Russians. For example, a night landing was recently carried out on a western cape in occupied Crimea after Ukrainian marines crossed the Black Sea in small speedboats. At the beginning of this month, the Russian warship Olenegorski Gornjak was also badly damaged by a naval drone that had traveled hundreds of kilometers across the Black Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiesk. With such attacks, like the two attacks on the Crimean bridge, Ukraine repeatedly exposes Russian weaknesses, which must feel like a humiliation in the Kremlin.

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The massive drone attack of the past 24 hours shows, according to Australian military analyst General Mick Ryan, that Ukraine’s capabilities to carry out attacks continue to refine. “The Ukrainians are not only launching attacks against a growing list of targets, but they are also attacking from greater distances,” he said. said Ryan Wednesday morning.

Drone strikes against Russian territory and against targets in occupied Crimea have increased rapidly in recent months. This summer, for example, Moscow regularly came under fire. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, drones are invariably taken out of the air by antiaircraft or electronic warfare, but photos show that the attacks in a number of cases cause considerable damage. In Moscow, drones have already been intercepted at the Kremlin, at the airports, and in the city’s western business district, Moskva-City. In other regions of Russia, military airfields, fuel depots and oil refineries are among the main targets.

Ukraine is building its own drones

Because Ukraine’s western allies do not want to supply the country with missiles with which Kyiv can attack targets on Russian territory, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has had its own unmanned attack drones developed since the large-scale Russian invasion.

For example, a Soviet-made reconnaissance and surveillance drone, the Tu-141 Strizh, was modified and converted into an attack drone with the characteristics of a cruise missile. To the great horror of the Russians, they were used in December last year in attacks on the Engels-2 air base near the city of Saratov and on the Djagilevo military airfield near the city of Ryazan.

The Ukrainian air force now has drones that can fly several thousand kilometers – and remain under the Russian radar. Sea drones have been developed for attacks on Russian ships and other maritime targets, which can also cause a lot of damage.

Symbolic value

The Ukrainian attacks on targets on Russian soil are likely to have a limited impact on the military capabilities of the Russian armed forces; for example, the Air Force can quite easily absorb the loss of three or four military transport aircraft, and fuel can always be sourced from elsewhere.

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But the attacks on Russian targets do have great value for Ukraine, politically and symbolically. The war has long ceased to be fought solely on Ukrainian territory, President Volodymyr Zelensky underlined in one of his daily speeches to the country at the end of July. “Slowly the war is coming back to the territory of Russia – to its symbolic centers and military bases,” he said at the time. “That is an inevitable, natural and absolutely fair process.”

Moscow is increasingly trying to arm itself better against the ongoing attacks, but it is far from being able to prevent everything. On Wednesday, the Tass news agency reported early in the morning that a Russian naval plane had destroyed four Ukrainian speedboats with fifty soldiers on board around midnight on the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, the Russian Air Force continues its own campaign against Ukraine. Heavy attacks were carried out in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, this time with Kyiv as the main target. In Shevchenkivsky district, two people were killed and three injured by debris from a downed missile.

All 28 cruise missiles and 15 of Russia’s 16 attack drones were shot down during the night, according to Ukrainian army commander General Valery Zaluzhny. Falling debris from the projectiles did cause a lot of damage in Kyiv. The head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhi Popko, said it was the heaviest Russian missile attack on the capital since last spring. Explosions were also heard in the southern port city of Odesa and in the central Cherkasy region.