Ukraine’s intelligence directorate may have pulled off its most impressive strike on Russian territory since Russia widened its war on Ukraine 28 months ago.
According to Ukrainian Pravda, citing intelligence sources, the directorate flew long-range strike drones a staggering 1,100 miles on Saturday to hit Olenya airfield, a Russian air force bomber base in Murmansk in northern Russia.
The raid on Olenya was reportedly part of a wider Ukrainian operation that also sent explosive drones toward two other air bases as well as an oil refinery.
Using a growing arsenal of locally made drones, the Ukrainian intelligence directorate has been stepping up its raids on targets inside Russia. Airfields and oil refineries are the main targets, but the drones also strike weapons factories and space facilities. Spread increasingly thin by the widening assault, Russian air defenses struggle to shoot down the drones.
The purported 1,100-mile raid beat, by 300 miles, the Ukrainian drone operators’ previous distance record. In May, a Ukrainian drone—a pilotless version of a propeller-driven sport plane—struck an oil refinery in Salavat, in Russia more than 800 miles from the front line in Ukraine.
It’s unclear what kind of drone the Ukrainians aimed at Olenya, assuming the raid really did take place. The modified sport planes might be the farthest-flying drones, but the intelligence directorate in Kyiv operates more than a dozen other drone types.
In any event, it’s obvious why the directorate would want to damage Olenya. It’s one of several bases that routinely supports the Russian air force’s Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers.
The 63 or so Tu-22M3s, along with around 55 Tupolev Tu-95s and 17 Tupolev Tu-160s frequently attack Ukrainian troops and civilians with cruise missiles. The mass missile raids aim to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses—and often succeed.
The bombers usually fire their missiles from hundreds of miles away, which is too far for most of Ukraine’s air defenses to effectively shoot back. That said, a rare Ukrainian S-200 heavy surface-to-air missile may have hit an airborne Tu-22M3 over southern Russia in April.
No, the Ukrainians usually target the 139-foot, swing-wing bombers while they’re on the ground. In 2022 and again last year, Ukrainian drones targeted Tu-22M3s at their bases inside Russia, apparently destroying one bomber and damaging another.
It’s unclear whether the Saturday raid on Olenya hit any parked bombers. Indeed, it may never be clear. The Kremlin rarely admits to such losses, leaving outside observers to scrutinize commercial satellite imagery for evidence of burned airframes. So far, there’s no imagery clearly depicting any wrecked Tu-22M3s at the northern base.
What is clear is that operatives in Kyiv aren’t just sustaining their attacks on Russia’s most powerful warplanes while they’re parked and vulnerable—they’re escalating the attacks. If the Saturday raid occurred as Pravda reported, Russian bombers aren’t safe anywhere within a thousand miles of the front line.
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