Drone attack sparks fire at military site in Southern Russia

MOSCOW, Russia

Russian authorities said Thursday that a Ukrainian drone strike sparked a fire at a military site that some observers identified as an airfield housing warplanes that may be involved in combat operations against Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region.

Volgograd region Governor Andrei Bocharov said Russian air defenses repelled a drone attack near the village of Marinovka, around 300 kilometers east of the border with Ukraine and the site of a Russian airforce base.

“As a result of a drone crash, a fire broke out on a defense ministry facility,” Bocharov wrote on Telegram. “Fire and rescue services promptly started firefighting efforts. There were no casualties.”

Russia’s defense ministry did not immediately comment on the reported fire, saying only that its forces destroyed 13 drones over the Volgograd region as part of wider Ukrainian drone attacks across the country overnight.

Eyewitness videos published by the independent Telegram news channel Astra showed thick smoke and explosions at what was claimed to be the Marinovka airbase. Several fires at the Marinovka base were later recorded by NASA observation satellites. 

Open-source intelligence bloggers said at least 14 Su-24 and 15 Su-34 bomber aircraft were housed at Marinovka earlier this week.

Russia’s investigative news outlet iStories, citing state media, reported that Marinka’s Su-34s may have been used to bomb Ukrainian targets in southwestern Russia’s Kursk region earlier in the day.

The Volgograd Internațional Airport temporarily grounded all flights earlier Thursday.