Moscow said on Tuesday that Ukraine had fired six US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles, six British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles and at least 146 drones at Russia in an attack it said would not go unanswered.
After Ukraine first launched ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles against Russia last year, Moscow responded on November 21 by launching a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik” or Hazel Tree, into Ukraine.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had shot down all Western missiles fired by Ukraine at the Bryansk region, as well as 146 drones outside the war zone. He said two more Storm Shadows had been shot down over the Black Sea.
“The actions of the kyiv regime, supported by its Western curators, will not go unanswered,” the Defense Ministry stated.
President Vladimir Putin said in November that Ukraine’s war was escalating into a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine for the first time to launch its missiles into Russia.
President-elect Donald Trump has pushed for a ceasefire and negotiations to quickly end the war, leaving Washington’s long-term support for Ukraine in doubt.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 left tens of thousands dead, millions displaced and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The drone attack on Russia was one of the largest to date.
Roman Busargin, governor of the Saratov region, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow, said the cities of Saratov and Engels, on opposite banks of the Volga River, had been subject to a massive drone attack and that two sites industrial plants suffered damage. Schools have moved to remote learning, he said.
Ukraine attacked the same region last week and claimed to have attacked an oil depot that served as an air base for Russian nuclear bomber planes, causing a huge fire that took five days to put out.
The drone attack hit a munitions storage facility containing guided bombs and missiles at Engels air base in Russia’s Saratov region, as well as other targets, a Ukrainian Security Service source said on Tuesday.
The attack caused a major fire at the Aleksinsky chemical plant in the Tula region and a fire at the Saratovsky oil refinery, while the Bryansk chemical plant was also hit, the source said. Reuters could not independently verify the damage claims.
The source said there were subsequent detonations at the Bryansk chemical plant, as well as a large fire. The operation was carried out by the SBU and the Ukrainian defense forces, a Ukrainian source told Reuters from kyiv.
Flight restrictions were imposed at airports in Kazan, Saratov, Penza, Ulyanovsk and Nizhnekamsk, Russia’s aviation watchdog said.
