KYIV: Ukraine said on Monday that its forces destroyed a Russian military transport plane stationed at an airfield deep inside Russian territory over the weekend, marking the latest Ukrainian claim of an attack behind Moscow's lines. Ukraine has increased attacks inside Russian territory in recent months, targeting military sites and energy facilities to disrupt Russian military logistics.
Kyiv's military intelligence agency stated that it had destroyed the Tu-134 transport aircraft overnight between Saturday and Sunday at a military airfield in the Orenburg region, approximately 1,000 kilometres from the border with Ukraine. "These Soviet-built planes are mainly used to transport leadership of the Russian defence ministry," the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine said on social media. The agency posted footage of what Ukraine described as an arson attack, showing a fire blazing inside an aircraft, but it did not provide details of how the attack was carried out.
There was no immediate response from Moscow regarding the specific claims. Since February 2022, Moscow has detained hundreds of people for alleged sabotage and arson attacks on military, railway and other infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Russian forces recaptured a small village in southern Ukraine that Kyiv had reclaimed during its summer counter-offensive last year, the Russian defence ministry said on Monday. Levadne, located in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, was home to only a few residents and lies along the southern frontline. It was one of seven villages the Ukrainian army retook from Moscow last June during a largely unsuccessful counteroffensive and is situated just southwest of the Ukrainian-held stronghold of Velyka Novosilka. In a daily briefing, the Russian defence ministry announced that its forces had "liberated the settlement of Levadnoye," using the Russian name for the village.
Moreover, Russian shelling and drone attacks killed three people and wounded eight others in southern Ukraine on Monday, as Kyiv warned that Moscow was targeting civilian infrastructure ahead of winter. Two women were killed when a Russian drone struck a car in the southern Kherson region, while Russian shelling on the port of Odesa resulted in one death and eight injuries, according to officials. The Odesa attack also damaged two civilian ships, including a Palau-flagged cargo vessel that was struck "for the second time" in two weeks, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba wrote on Telegram. — AFP
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