Kyiv targets a strategic bomber base in Engels and Russia unleashes a series of drone attacks in eastern Ukraine. Russian shelling in eastern Ukraine intensified overnight and killed two people, as Ukraine struck Russia’s Engels military airfield in the nation’s southwest region of Saratov with drones.
Russia and Ukraine intensified air assaults early on Thursday as United States President Donald Trump pressured both forces to sign off on a truce after more than three years of conflict. Ukrainian officials in the eastern border regions of Sumy and Kharkiv reported two were killed and numerous others wounded when Russia launched well over three dozen glide bombs against the towns.
Russian drone attacks on the town of Kropyvnytskyi, hundreds of kilometres from the front line, wounded 14 people and damaged rail infrastructure. Kropyvnytskyi underwent the most massive enemy attack. Peaceful residential buildings were destroyed,” regional governor Andriy Raikovych said.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia’s barrage, which included Kropyvnytskyi, was 171 drones and 75 of them were destroyed. A further 63 were destroyed by electronic jamming equipment or were lost. Later, Ukraine targeted Russia’s Engels airbase in the Saratov region using attack drones overnight, starting a fire and explosions there, the Ukrainian military reported on Thursday.
The airbase is home to Russian strategic bombers that are employed to strike Ukraine and also contains a warehouse storing cruise missiles and glide bombs, an official from the Security Service of Ukraine stated.
“It is important because … the city hosts Russia’s strategic bomber fleet,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari reported from Moscow. “This is not the first attack on the area, but this is the largest one so far [since February 2022, when the war began]. A state of emergency has been imposed.”
Local officials reported that 10 were wounded in the attack. Jabbari added that 30 civilian residences and the city’s central hospital were damaged. This is another indication that Ukraine is not serious about a peace agreement,” she said.
This new round of tit-for-tat strikes comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed a 30-day cessation of attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. He did not, however, promise a complete ceasefire.
“It’s a partial ceasefire, only related to the energy infrastructure of both countries. And it has not yet been put into action. The specifics will be worked out when there are negotiations in Saudi Arabia [in the next few days],” Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig reported from Kyiv. For now, there is still a fight,” he continued. “The red line for Ukraine is that they will not accept occupied Ukrainian territory as part of the Russian Federation. So, we are still quite far off until the end of the war.
