Hammers Russian airbases

Ukraine hammers Russian airbases as Kyiv’s incursion triggers panic

The Ukrainian attack is “creating a real dilemma” for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, said U.S. President Joe Biden.

BY ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH

Kyiv’s forces continued their incursion into Russian territory overnight, targeting airbases, sending a barrage of missiles and drones into the Kursk region and triggering a state of emergency in the entire Belgorod region.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement Wednesday morning that dozens of Ukrainian drones were shot down across the southwest of the country over the regions of Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Volgograd, Bryansk, Orel, Rostov and Nizhny Novgorod.

Ukraine appeared to be targeting Russia's airbases. The Nizhny Novgorod region is home to Savasleyka airbase, where Moscow's forces house aircraft equipped with the hypersonic Kinzhal missiles. According to local and Ukrainian media reports, multiple drones hit the airbase. The Astra independent news site reported that the Borisoglebsk aviation center in the Voronezh region had been hit, noting that pro-war military bloggers said at least three Russian airbases were targeted overnight. Last week, Ukraine said it hit Russia's Lipetsk airbase.

Moscow claimed its forces had halted Ukraine's advance in the Kursk region and were pushing it back, but there were conflicting reports from some Russian war bloggers and Kyiv. Ukraine claims to now control at least 74 villages in the Kursk region alone.

"Ukrainian Armed Forces are advancing, Russians are fleeing. It's working, and that's the main thing," Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Pislar who is taking part in the Kursk offensive told POLITICO.

U.S. President Joe Biden addressed Kyiv’s incursion overnight, telling reporters that the operation was “creating a real dilemma” for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He added that his team was in "constant contact" with Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly address on Tuesday, said "hundreds of Russian servicemen have already surrendered" to Kyiv's forces, replenishing the "exchange fund" of prisoners of war.

Belgorod regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a video posted to Telegram early Wednesday that the situation remained “extremely difficult and tense” amid sustained shelling from Ukraine's forces.

He said more people had been evacuated overnight, and that he had declared a regional state of emergency for the entirety of the region, adding that authorities were planning to request a federal state of emergency.

Alexei Smirnov, Russia’s acting regional governor of Kursk, said on Telegram late Tuesday that a volunteer squad had been working to evacuate people from the areas that were under attack, adding that for the past week since Ukraine's surprise incursion, "they work under shelling, practically without sleep or rest." Four Ukrainian missiles had been destroyed over Kursk, the governor said.

Ukraine has been quietly pleased with its cross-border successes.

"The SBU continues to methodically weaken the aviation component of the Russian military machine. It is the planes that are currently giving the enemy an advantage in the air, but we will continue to clip the wings of these 'birds,'" a high-level SBU official, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive details, told POLITICO.

Although Ukraine rarely officially confirms drone attacks on Russian soil, Ukrainian special forces, armed forces, newly created UAV forces and the SBU launched the biggest attack so far against four Russian military airfields, the SBU official said.

 “It was our strongest attack since the start of the war. A fun night today at the airfields of Voronezh, Kursk, Savasleyka and Borisoglebsk — airfields from where Russian jets bomb our front-line cities with unstoppable glided bombs,” the official said.

The strikes were effective, with local media counting 10 explosions on Savasleyka airfield in the Voronezh region overnight, the official said.

The Kremlin pulled some troops out of southern Ukraine and back into its own territory to try to fend off the escalating incursion, Dmytro Lykhoviy, a Ukrainian army spokesman, told POLITICO on Tuesday.