A broken Russian air power Tu-22M bomber following the Dec. 5, 2022 drone raid.
By way of social media
For 10 months, the Russian air power’s heavy bombers have bombarded Ukrainian cities with impunity, lobbing cruise missiles from lots of of miles away and even, in a number of dramatic sorties, flying straight over the besieged port of Mariupol to drop unguided bombs.
These practically day by day bomber raids have destroyed properties, colleges and church buildings and killed lots of, if not hundreds, of Ukrainian civilians.
Now the Ukrainian armed forces have exacted a measure of revenge. On Monday morning, Ukrainian drones struck the Russian bomber bases at Dyagilevo and Engels, respectively 100 and 400 miles southeast of Moscow—and each practically 300 miles from the Ukrainian border.
The practically simultaneous drone raids broken two bombers, killed three Russian personnel and wounded 4, in line with the Russian protection ministry.
Pictures that circulated on-line within the hours after the assault verify the injury to 1 bomber at Dyagilevo, a twin-engine, swing-wing Tupolev Tu-22M3. It was the supersonic Tu-22M3s that, again within the spring, carpet-bombed the Ukrainian garrison holed up on the Azovstal metal plant in Mariupol.
The Russian air power has loads of bombers left: 60 Tu-22Ms, 60 subsonic Tupolev Tu-95s and 16 supersonic Tupolev Tu-160s. But when the Ukrainians can strike distant bombers bases as soon as, there’s no motive they will’t do it once more.
The Kremlin claimed its air-defenses intercepted the incoming drones. The injury and casualties had been the results of “the autumn and explosion of fragments,” it alleged. Which may be true, but it surely doesn’t make the Ukrainian raid any much less profitable. Wrecked bombers and lifeless troops don’t care in the event that they had been hit by wreckage or an intact drone.
The raids on Dyagilevo and Engels aren’t remoted incidents. The Ukrainian armed forces have been putting Russian air bases deep inside Russia because the first month of Russia’s wider battle on Ukraine beginning in February.
In one of the profitable raids, concentrating on Saki air base in occupied Crimea in August, knocked out a number of Russian navy fighter-bombers.
The Ukrainians have struck Russian air bases with long-range artillery, rockets, ballistic missiles, explosives-laden “suicide” drones and even—allegedly—land-based anti-ship missiles. In a single startling assault in October, Ukrainian saboteurs traveled to an air base in Pskov, 500 miles from Ukraine, and blew up at the least one Russian air power Kamov Ka-52 assault helicopter.
Ukraine’s counter-airfield marketing campaign is reaching deeper and deeper into Russia, holding in danger a few of the Kremlin’s most beneficial belongings. For the Russians, it’s a really troubling growth.
It’s not for no motive that, simply hours after the assaults on Dyagilevo and Engels, the Russian air power struck again at Ukrainian cities, launching at the least 14 Tu-95s carrying long-range cruise missiles programmed to strike “communication facilities, power and army models of Ukraine,” in line with the Kremlin. “All 17 assigned targets had been hit.”
