Ukraine's 'Massive drone attack' hits Russian airbase

KYIV, Ukraine

Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia showed no signs of abating on August 9, with its military reporting a strike on a major military airfield after Russian media and local officials reported a "massive" drone strike in the same area that triggered an evacuation of people from parts of its western region of Lipetsk.

The cross-border action in the Kursk region of Russia has been described as the biggest attack on Russian soil since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his country’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Much remains unclear, including the number of Ukrainian soldiers taking part, although the Russian military has claimed it involves some 1,000 troops and more than two dozen armored vehicles and tanks.

Since the start of the incursion on August 6, Ukrainian troops have seized control of about 600 square kilometers of territory, and more than two dozen settlements, according to local officials, pro-war bloggers, and open-source intelligence reports.

Ukrainian officials have not officially confirmed the operation, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his evening address on August 8 that Russia needed to "feel" the consequences of its invasion.

"Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done," Zelenskiy said, without directly referring to the offensive.

The Ukrainian military said it had hit the airfield in the Lipetsk region of southern Russia overnight, damaging guided bomb stockpiles.

"Several sources of ignition were recorded, a large fire broke out and multiple detonations were observed," Kyiv's military said on the Telegram messaging app.

It said Russian Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 aircraft were based at the airfield.

Earlier, official Russian media, including TASS, reported a fire at the military airfield in the Lipetsk region, which is west of the Kursk region, the site of the ongoing incursion. The reports gave no cause for the blaze.

Those reports came hours after regional Governor Igor Artamonov said on social media that Lipetsk had "been subjected to a massive UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) attack. He later added that a local power installation had been damaged and six people had been wounded.

Artamonov first urged residents to ignore calls on social media to evacuate, saying they were being “spread by the enemy in order to sow panic.” Hours later, he said a state of emergency had been declared in the Lipetsk district and that four outlying settlements of Lipetsk city had been ordered to evacuate.