Ukraine launched a ‘massive’ attack on Russia overnight as it struck a key rocket and space plant more than 500 miles from its border.
Kyiv also targeted the Savasleyka military airfield, a base for Russian fighter jets, and an oil facility in Ust-Luga, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Ivan Noskov, head of the regional capital Samara, said air defences had repelled a ‘massive attack’.
‘Samara’s industrial infrastructure sustained localised damage,’ he said in an online post, without giving further details on what facility had been affected.
He said there were casualties and that he was ‘working with the management of the enterprise and emergency services on the scene’.
Videos shared on social media show the TsSKB-Progress complex in Samara ablaze with thick plumes of smoke rising.
The sprawling Progress plant is the principal production centre for Russia’s workhorse Soyuz-2 rockets and develops Earth-observation and military spacecraft.
Ukraine struck a key Russian rocket plant in Samara with Flamingo missiles overnight
Videos shared on social media show the TsSKB-Progress complex in Samara ablaze with thick plumes of smoke rising
The sprawling Progress plant is the principal production centre for Russia’s workhorse Soyuz-2 rockets and develops Earth-observation and military spacecraft
A motive behind the attack may have been to disrupt launches of Rassvet satellites – Russia’s answer to Elon Musk‘s Starlink system, which Vladimir Putin is fast-tracking to provide rapid and secure internet connections for troops and drones.
With Russian forces banned from using Starlink, Rassvet can be used to control long-range drones and transmit targeting information during attacks on Ukraine.
The Flamingo strike, which took place from a distance of 750 miles away, is a major psychological blow to Putin.
It shows the success of a homegrown Ukrainian missile in causing devastating damage to a key Russian war-linked plant.
Ukraine has shared footage of two FP-5 Flamingo launches targeting Samara. The jet-powered cruise missile has a range of 1,860 miles and a one-ton warhead.
Separately, another missile launched by Ukraine hit a military airfield in Savasleyka in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
Huge explosions were heard overnight at the airbase.
This airfield, east of Moscow, is home to Russia’s MiG-31K aircraft which have deployed Kinzhal hypersonic missiles against Ukraine.
Firefighters work on the grounds of a burned DIY and construction materials mall following an overnight attack in Russian-controlled Ukraine
Buildings were damaged in Yenakiyeve in the Donetsk region in strikes overnight amid the ongoing conflict
A firefighter walks amid debris at a burnt-out hypermarket following an overnight attack in the Donetsk region
Ukraine has run out of US Patriot air defence missiles which are the only ones capable of resisting Khinzhal ballistic strikes.
In another strike, Ukraine attacked Russia’s Iskander missile launch sites near Balaclava in occupied Crimea, with fires raging early today.
And as Ukraine hit clearly defined military targets seeking to pressure Putin to agree a peace settlement, Russia staged yet more attacks on civilians.
A three-month-old boy was killed and a dozen people injured in a strike on Marganets, in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.
The Russian strike was on a four-storey residential building.
Among the injured are two children – a boy, five, and a girl, 12.
This came as Ukrainian forces appeared to have driven Russia’s organised military units out of almost all of the Dnipropetrovsk region after a seven-month counteroffensive.
A Russian military channel acknowledged a ‘temporary withdrawal’, although Kyiv has not formally declared the region completely cleared.
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