(1/3)Rescuers work at a site of buildings damaged overnight by Russian missile and drone attack, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in the Kiev region, Ukraine, on August 30, 2023. Service press service State Emergency of Ukraine/Handout via REUTERS A Purchase license rights
Aug 30 (Reuters) – Russia said it foiled one of the biggest Ukrainian drone strikes to date in western Russia on Wednesday, shooting down drones in at least six regions, and destroyed a Ukrainian naval strike on the peninsula. of annexed Crimea.
Russian military aircraft were damaged and civil aviation disrupted in drone strikes, Russian officials said, citing the Pskov, Bryansk, Kaluga, Orlov, Ryazan and Moscow regions as targets.
The most significant attack appeared to take place in Pskov, some 660 kilometers (411 miles) north of the Ukrainian border near the Estonian and Latvian borders, where Russian officials said four Il-76 military personnel transport planes were damaged.
Ukraine, which has yet to achieve much success in its summer ground counteroffensive, has attacked Russia deeply in recent months, including an attack on the Kremlin in May and numerous drone strikes against civilian targets in Moscow.
Ukraine normally does not comment on who is behind the attacks on Russian soil, though officials have publicly welcomed them.
Footage posted by the Pskov governor on Telegram showed smoke billowing from a large fire as sirens and an explosion were heard. Other reports on Telegram channels showed anti-aircraft systems in action around the city, which is just 32 kilometers (20 miles) east of the Estonian border.
The Tass news agency, citing emergency services, said four Il-76 transport planes, long the workhorse of the Russian army, were damaged at the military airfield. Two of the planes “burst into flames,” she added.
Civilian flights were canceled at the local airport. The airspace around Moscow’s Vnukovo airport was briefly closed, TASS reported.
Russia said Ukrainian drones tried to attack a television tower in the Bryansk region. No casualties were reported.
A Russian plane also destroyed four Ukrainian speedboats carrying up to 50 paratroopers in an operation in the Black Sea, the army said.
Russia launched its own airstrikes on Wednesday morning, killing at least two people in kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
MORE AMERICAN AID
The drone strikes came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new military assistance package to help Ukraine fight against Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
The package includes additional mine clearance equipment, missiles for air defense, as well as ammunition for artillery and small arms, Blinken said in a statement.
Ukraine is using large amounts of munitions in some of the most intense fighting of the war as it presses its summer counteroffensive in the south and east, where Russian forces are deeply entrenched.
On Tuesday, the head of the Russian mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin was buried in a leafy graveyard on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, six days after his death in an unexplained plane crash north of Moscow.
Prigozhin, two senior lieutenants from his Wagner group and four bodyguards were among the 10 people killed when their private Embraer Legacy 600 jet crashed under unexplained circumstances on August 23.
He died two months after staging a brief mutiny against the Russian defense establishment, in the biggest challenge to the government of President Vladimir Putin since he came to power in 1999.
Moscow says it is investigating the accident and has denied any involvement, but in Washington White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made her strongest statement yet about the possibility that Putin directed the assassination.
“We all know that the Kremlin has a long history of killing opponents,” he said. “It’s very clear what happened here.”
Russia informed Brazil’s aircraft investigation authority that it would not investigate the crash of the Brazilian-made Embraer. (EMBR3.SA) jet under international rules “At this moment,” the Brazilian news agency told Reuters on Tuesday.
Russia’s aviation authority is not required to follow international investigative protocols, as the flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg was a domestic one.
Information from the Reuters bureau; Written by Stephen Coates and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Michael Perry
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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