Ukrainian drones attack Russian airport as Kyiv pursues incursion

Ukrainian drones have attacked a military airport in Russia’s Lipetsk region and detonated a large amount of ammunition, while Moscow declared a state of emergency in two regions ahead of Kyiv’s most ambitious counter-offensive yet.

The offensive, which began on Friday and is the largest by Kyiv forces on Russian soil since President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, was aimed at distracting Russian troops and exposing the country’s weaknesses, a government adviser in Kyiv said.

As Kyiv continued its offensive, a Russian attack on a crowded supermarket and post office in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka on Friday killed at least 10 civilians and wounded 35 others, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and local authorities said.

Officials released video showing black smoke billowing from a destroyed store and first responders working to rescue shoppers trapped under the rubble. Another video showed critically injured people lying on the sidewalk.

A Ukrainian official with knowledge of operations inside Russia told the Financial Times that last night’s drone attack on Russia was carried out by Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, with support from the army and special forces early on Friday morning.

The official said the Lipetsk air base – about 300km from the international border and just east of the latest fighting zone – had been targeted “to destroy Russian aviation logistics so that the enemy would not have a chance to bomb Ukrainian cities with anti-aircraft missiles”.

Several warehouses filled with ammunition were detonated, the official said. Videos posted on social media and geolocated by the Financial Times showed huge explosions that reached into the night sky.

Ukrainian officials claim that up to 700 glide bombs stored in warehouses were damaged or destroyed. Several dozen combat aircraft, including Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 aircraft, as well as military helicopters, were also present at the airbase, the Ukrainian military general staff said.

“Most of the aircraft stationed at the military airport… have no time to take off,” the Ukrainian official said.

The FT could not immediately verify whether the bombs or aircraft were damaged or destroyed. Russian military bloggers reported that no aircraft were damaged.

Lipetsk authorities have declared a state of emergency and ordered the evacuation of nearby towns. Videos shared on Russian Telegram channels show a line of civilian vehicles stretching for miles, fleeing east from the area.

Ukrainian officials said the Lipetsk attack followed an attack on the Morozovsk military base in Russia’s Rostov region on Monday that destroyed several air defense missiles and fighter jets.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces also attacked Russian anti-aircraft missile divisions in occupied territory east of Donetsk.

The attacks came as Ukrainian forces launched an offensive in the neighbouring Kursk region, where the Kremlin has lost control of about 350 square kilometres of territory, according to calculations by the FT and military analysts.

Alexei Smirnov, acting governor of the Kursk region, said the situation remained “difficult”. He said his government had declared a state of emergency, was still evacuating people and was providing assistance to those displaced.

Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington on Thursday that Ukraine was “acting to defend itself” and that the Biden administration did not view the incursion as an escalation.

Video and photographic evidence shows Ukrainian troops have moved as far as 35km into Russian territory from the international border, following a highway heading northwest.

A viral video, which the FT geolocated to a highway in Rylsk, shows a convoy of destroyed Russian military vehicles carrying soldiers stretching hundreds of metres. The bodies of several soldiers can be seen in the gruesome footage.

A person with knowledge of the operation shared a video with the FT showing a drone equipped with a first-person view (FPV) camera loaded with explosives crashing into the tail rotor of a Russian military helicopter.

The person said the SBU was behind the attack — the second Ukrainian FPV drone attack on a Russian helicopter this week. The person said both helicopters were downed as a result of the attacks, but the FT was unable to independently verify these claims.

Zelenskyy has not commented explicitly on the incursion, but thanked the Ukrainian military on Friday for “destroying the Russian occupiers, holding the front line and ensuring that Ukraine remains on the world map”.

“We are doing our best to give our fighters as many opportunities as possible to end this war as soon as possible with a just and lasting peace,” he said.

So far, elements of at least four Ukrainian mechanized and airborne brigades have taken part in the operation.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defence minister who advises the government, told the FT that Kyiv had planned the operation for a long time.

Its aims include diverting Russian troops fighting elsewhere in Ukraine, as well as bringing the war back to the Russians and discouraging them from supporting the war effort.

It also aimed to expose Russia’s weaknesses, including its inability to defend its borders and its attempt to seize the initiative on the battlefield a year after an unsuccessful counteroffensive and months after Russia’s victories.

⁠Zagorodnyuk said the Ukrainian military was demonstrating its ability to implement “new combined arms combat tactics” taught by Western military instructors.

He said the aim was not to seize and hold Russian territory “for the long term”. “We don’t need Russian land,” he said. “We want them to fail on our land.”

Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst at Rochan Consulting, a Poland-based security group, said Ukraine’s operation could help its position in the war if it forced Russia to divert resources from the eastern Donetsk region and allowed Kyiv to maintain a presence in Russia’s Kursk region.

That presence could give it a better negotiating position in the future, he said.

“However, if the Ukrainian army is pushed back from Russian territory without achieving any concrete results with great losses and if the Russian army continues to advance towards Pokrovsk,” he said, then the senior Ukrainian military leadership will be considered to have lost a big gamble.

“There is no middle ground here. This is very bold,” he said.

Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Riga and Anastasia Stognei in Tbilisi