KYIV (Reuters) – The Ukrainian military said on Friday it had hit a Russian military airfield in the Lipetsk region of western Russia overnight, damaging stockpiles of guided bombs and causing a series of detonations.
Kyiv has been attacking Russian airbases to reduce Moscow’s ability to use its warplanes to strike targets in Ukraine and hammer front lines with guided bombs and missiles. Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“Several sources of ignition were recorded, a large fire broke out and multiple detonations were observed,” Kyiv’s military said on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 warplanes were based at the airfield, it said.
A security source told Reuters that the attack was carried out by drones as dozens of planes and helicopters stood on the airfield, as well as a warehouse containing 700 guided bombs.
The Russian governor of the Lipetsk region, Igor Artamonov said a “massive attack” by Ukrainian drones had caused explosions, disrupted power supply and wounded nine people.
The Interfax news agency cited local emergency officials as saying a fire had broken out at the airbase outside the regional capital.
The Ukrainian source said most of the aircraft did not have time to take off.
“In early August we cleared the Morozovsk airfield of guided bombs and fighters, today it’s the turn of Lipetsk-2,” the source said.
Last Saturday, Ukraine said it had hit an ammunition depot at the Morozovsk airfield, where it said Russian forces stored guided aerial bombs and other equipment and had a number of fuel storage facilities.
Ukraine’s ability to strike military targets deep inside Russia has been hampered by its lack of long-range missiles. It has been appealing to the West to allow it to use Western-supplied weapons for such strikes.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk and Tom Balmforth; editing by Mark Heinrich and Kevin Liffey)
