Moscow said Tuesday that Ukraine had launched at least 146 drones, six Storm Shadow cruise missiles from the UK, and six ATACMS ballistic missiles from the United States into Russia in an attack that it stressed would not be ignored.
Moscow retaliated on November 21 by firing a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, Oreshnik, or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine in retaliation for Ukraine’s initial launch of ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles into Russia last year.
Russia’s military ministry claimed to have destroyed 146 drones outside the conflict zone and all of the Western missiles that Ukraine had launched at the Bryansk region. Over the Black Sea, it reported that two more Storm Shadows had been shot down.
The defense ministry declared that the Kyiv regime’s activities, which are backed by its Western backers, will not be tolerated.
After the United States and Britain permitted Ukraine to shoot its missiles far inside Russia for the first time, President Vladimir Putin declared in November that the war in Ukraine was intensifying toward a worldwide battle.
Washington’s long-term support for Ukraine is in doubt as President-elect Donald Trump has pressed for a ceasefire and talks to settle the conflict swiftly.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed, millions have been displaced, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has caused the worst crisis in Moscow-West relations since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Russia was the target of one of the largest drone attacks ever.
According to Roman Busargin, the governor of the Saratov area, which is located roughly 450 miles southeast of Moscow, two industrial facilities were damaged in a mass drone strike that targeted the cities of Saratov and Engels, which are on opposite sides of the Volga River. He claimed that schools have switched to remote learning.
Last week, Ukraine launched an attack in the same area, claiming to have hit an oil store that supplies a Russian nuclear bomber plane airbase. The massive fire took five days to extinguish.
According to a source in the Ukrainian Security Service on Tuesday, the drone strike targeted a munitions storage facility that held guided bombs and missiles at the Engels airbase in the Saratov region of Russia, among other targets.
According to the source, the strike resulted in a big fire at the Saratovsky oil refinery and the Aleksinsky chemical factory in the Tula region. The Bryansk chemical plant was also affected. Reuters was unable to independently confirm the damage allegations.
According to the source, there had been a big fire and several explosions at the chemical plant in Bryansk. The Ukrainian source told Reuters from Kyiv that the SBU and Ukraine’s defense forces carried out the operation.
Russia’s aviation authority reported that flights were restricted at the airports in Kazan, Saratov, Penza, Ulyanovsk, and Nizhnekamsk.