The Russian military said it shot down a Ukrainian drone approaching an air base deep inside Russia – the second time the facility has been targeted this month.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said debris killed three servicemen at the Engels air base, which houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have hit Ukraine with missiles in the 10-month-old war.
Four people were hurt and a fire broke out, Russia’s Baza news outlet reported, with blasts, sirens and flashes shown on a video posted to its Telegram channel.
The Defence Ministry claimed no Russian aircraft were damaged.
It was not clear if the drone was launched from Ukraine or Russian territory.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 26 December 2022
Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/nfobPRqbHZ
🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/yvZQ3XdjHK— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 26, 2022
If the drone was launched from Ukraine, it would have travelled over 370 miles to reach Engels, in Russia’s Saratov region on the Volga River.
Shooting the drone down after such a long trip inside Russia again raises questions about the effectiveness of the country’s air defences, particularly those intended to protect its most strategic military assets such as warplanes capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
In keeping with the Kyiv government’s long-standing practice of not confirming cross-border attacks but welcoming their results, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat did not directly acknowledge his country’s involvement in Monday’s incident – but said: “These are the consequences of Russian aggression.”
He added: “If the Russians thought that the war wouldn’t affect them deep behind their lines, they were deeply mistaken.”
During the war, Russia has suffered numerous cross-border attacks on its main territory, as well as on the Crimean Peninsula, which it illegally annexed in 2014.
The incidents have outraged Russian military bloggers, who say they show the country’s weak air defences and security systems in general.
On Monday, in another cross-border incident that could not be independently confirmed, Russia’s Tass news agency said the country’s security forces killed four Ukrainian saboteurs attempting to enter the Bryansk region from Ukraine.
The report said the infiltrators carried explosive materials when they were caught on Sunday.
The cross-border attacks on Russian military and other strategic sites prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to order almost weekly missile and weaponised drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing widespread blackouts that also knocked out heating and water supplies in increasingly frigid weather.
The attacks, which began in October across much of the country, have been occurring as ground fighting focused on Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions.
In eastern Ukraine on Monday, Luhansk’s Ukrainian governor, Serhiy Haidai, said Russian forces left their military command operations post in the town of Kreminna as Ukrainian forces approached after months of intense fighting.
Russia’s Defence Ministry did not comment on the withdrawal claim.
Russian forces relocated to Kreminna and several other areas in September after pulling back from the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine.
Kreminna is in the eastern Luhansk region, which is almost entirely under Moscow’s control, on an important supply route for Russian forces and serves as a gateway for movement into other strategic positions.
Earlier, Mr Haidai said Russia had withdrawn its occupying government administration from Svatove, 31 miles north of Kreminna.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Monday that “the situation there is difficult, painful. The occupiers are expending all the resources available to them — and they are considerable resources — to squeeze out at least some advance”.
Mr Haidai told Ukrainian television on Monday Russian forces in the region are “suffering huge losses and medical facilities are overwhelmed with wounded soldiers”.
The Russian army is redeploying paratroopers from the Kherson region to the area, he added.
In the neighbouring Donetsk region, partially occupied by Russia, fierce battles continue around the city of Bakhmut, which Russian forces have been trying to seize for weeks to consolidate their grip on Ukraine’s east.
Mr Zelensky said last week Bakhmut was the hottest spot on the war’s 800-mile front line.
Ukrainian officials have maintained ambiguity over previous high-profile attacks, including drone strikes on Russian military bases earlier this month.
On December 5, unprecedented drone strikes on Engels and the Dyagilevo base in the Ryazan region in western Russia killed three servicemen and hurt four others.
In retaliation, Russia launched a massive missile barrage in Ukraine which struck homes and buildings and killed civilians.
Elsewhere on the battlefield, at least four civilians were hurt in Russian shelling of five Ukrainian south-east regions over the past 24 hours, according to the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko.
Overall, the intensity of the shelling from Sunday night into Monday was significantly lower.
For the first time in weeks, Russian forces did not shell the Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders the partially occupied southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, its governor, Valentyn Reznichenko, reported on Telegram.
“This is the third quiet night in 5.5 months since the Russians started shelling” the areas around the city of Nikopol, Mr Reznichenko wrote.
Nikopol is across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, which is under the control of Russian forces and whose six reactors are shut down.
(1/2) Russian forces have largely focused on constructing defensive positions along many sections of the front line in Ukraine since October. This includes laying additional fields of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, almost certainly going beyond Russian doctrinal guidelines.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) December 26, 2022
Ukrainian-controlled areas of the neighbouring Kherson region were shelled 33 times over the past 24 hours, according to Kherson’s Ukrainian governor Yaroslav Yanushevich.
No casualties were reported.
On Sunday, Russian forces attacked the city of Kramatorsk, where Ukrainian forces are headquartered. Three missiles hit an industrial facility and damaged residential buildings but no casualties were reported, according to local officials.
On Saturday, a deadly attack on the city of Kherson, which Kyiv’s forces recaptured last month, killed and wounded scores of people. Local residents are lining up to donate blood for the wounded, Mr Yanushevich said on Monday.
