A night-time wave of long-range Ukrainian strike drones pummeled a military airfield deep inside Russia, sparking hours of explosions and major fires burning well into Thursday morning.
An SBU source told Kyiv Post that agents from Ukraine’s national intelligence agency and operators from the army’s Special Operations command carried out the attack, which reached more than 400 km (249 miles) into Russian territory.
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The air raid hit the Russian Air Force’s Marinovka air base, in the southern Volgograd region near the city of Kalach-Na-Donu. Russian news reports said a strike squadron flying Russia’s late-model Su-24MP close air support jet, and an attack squadron flying the Su-34 strike jet operate from the airfield.
Local chat groups reported between six and ten heavy explosions were heard from the direction of the air base starting at about 4 a.m. local (Moscow) time.
Some video posted by residents contained audio of small arms firing as drones approached. Russian air defenses later claimed its forces had shot down at least five Ukrainian kamikaze aircraft in the vicinity.
The strike targeted warehouses at the base containing glider bombs and military fuel storage reservoirs used daily by the Russian Air Force to attack targets in Ukraine, and much of that airfield infrastructure went up in flames, the SBU source said.
Extensive civilian video filmed on dashcams from nearby roads and from the nearby village Oktyabrskaya showed at least six major fires burning near or inside the base area, throwing black and gray smoke plumes hundreds of meters into the sky.
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Russia’s Defense Ministry, in a mid-Friday morning statement, acknowledged a Ukrainian strike drone operation in the Volgograd region but claimed all aircraft were shot down by air defense forces. Russian military facilities suffered insignificant damage from “falling debris” and all combat aircraft targeted by Kyiv evaded the strikes, the official announcement said.
Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov in statements posted on his personal Telegram said the Ukrainian drone attack “was repelled…with the majority of the drones eliminated…(and)…as a result of the fall of one drone, a fire broke out on the site of a Defense Ministry installation.”
“According to preliminary information, no one was injured and there was no damage,” Bocharev said.
NASA satellite imagery available to the public on Thursday morning told a different story, showing the airfield to be almost certainly unusable because of three major fires, two of which appeared to be co-located with storage buildings or ammunition bunkers.
Local chat groups said an evacuation of Oktyabrskaya and, possibly, the neighboring villages Prikal’nyi and Komsomol’skii would be unavoidable if multiple fires burning at the airfield were not brought under control.
According to regional news platforms, explosions were still taking place by midday Moscow time. Some blasts were powerful enough to rattle windows in homes more than a kilometer from the airfield.
As of Aug. 19, fourteen Su-25s and fifteen Su-34s were based at Marinovka, Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency reported. The independent Russian Astra news agency listed the 2nd Separate Reconnaissance Aviation Squadron, the 4th Air Force Headquarters, and the 7th Air and Space Forces Brigade as units based at Marinovka airfield. There were no early reports of aircraft hit in the Thursday drone raid.
Early this year, Ukrainian strike planners kicked off a campaign targeting Russian military airfields and particularly bomb depots and aircraft fuel storage, in an effort to reduce Russian bomber strikes against Ukrainian military units, homes and businesses.
The Russian Air Force, since the Kremlin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has enjoyed near total air superiority against thin Ukrainian air defenses. Since late last year, Russian tactical aircraft have employed guided glide bombs allowing Moscow’s pilots to launch strikes from well outside the range of most Ukrainian anti-aircraft units.
Ukraine has attempted to counter Kremlin airpower with long-range drone strikes targeting Russian air bases, particularly fixed airfield infrastructure, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s army intelligence service HUR told the Ukrainian information platform WarZone in a Wednesday interview.
On Aug. 21, HUR operators launched drone strikes hitting a radio communications center, an airport, and an airbase in Russia’s Moscow region, and a second wave of air raids against an air base in Russia’s southwest, near the city of Millerovo, Budanov said. The extent of damage wasn’t yet clear, he said.
Post-strike reconnaissance following an Aug. 16 drone attack on the Savasleyka airfield in Russia’s Nizhniy Novgorod region has confirmed the destruction of a MiG-31 Foxhound interceptor and two Il-76 Candid transport aircraft, and possible damage to another five aircraft, Budanov said.
From Aug. 19-21, Ukraine launched nightly drone raids against Russia’s Olenya airfield near the Arctic city of Murmansk. The base is home to units of Russian Tu-22M Backfire bombers and is a staging area for Tu-95MS Bear-H bombers – both of which the Kremlin has used since mid-2023 to launch long-range missiles at Ukrainian homes and businesses.
According to official Russian statements, none of the Murmansk strikes got through to the target.
Pro-Russia milbloggers, in the hours after the Marinovka strike, were calling the Kremlin narrative of Ukraine attack drone ineffectiveness and Russian air defense effectiveness into question.
The widely read and Moscow-sanctioned FighterBomber, a former Russian Air Force pilot with more than a half million followers, said that the Kremlin and its appointees were misleading the Russian public. The Kremlin is pretending Ukrainian drones do no damage when in fact they do, he charged.
“It is OK to make mistakes. But to lie is forbidden,” he wrote, in comments on the Marinovka air base strike.
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