Ukraine claims to have damaged Russian fighter jets in night-time raid

Ukrainian special forces claim to have damaged two fighter jets in a night-time raid on an airfield deep inside Russia as Kyiv sought to disrupt Vladimir Putin's steady advances on the frontline.
A week after the spectacle of Operation Spiderweb, when drones struck the Kremlin's nuclear-capable bombers, the general staff of the Ukrainian army claimed a fresh success.
Special operations forces were said to have launched an assault on the Savasleyka airfield, located in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia, about 400 miles from the Ukrainian border.
The army did not provide any details about the nature of the operation and questions remain about the extent of the damage inflicted.
The airfield is used by Russia to deploy MiG-31K fighters carrying Kinzhal ballistic missiles which have been used against Ukrainian armed forces and its cities.
'According to preliminary information, two units of enemy aircraft were hit (probably MiG-31 and Su-30/34 aircraft),' the general staff said in a statement. 'The results of the combat operation are being clarified.'
Video footage also emerged of a successful drone strike on a factory in Cheboksary, about 800 miles from the Ukrainian border, which makes components crucial to the targeting mechanisms in self-propelled howitzers, Iskander missile systems and Lancet and Shahed kamikaze drones.
Ukraine's armed forces said the attack on the VNIIR-Progress plant, which is under US sanctions, had led the authorities in Russia to halt commercial flights in the region.
They said: 'At present, the destruction of the facility by at least two UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones] and the subsequent large-scale fire have been confirmed. The results of the destruction are being clarified.'
Oleg Nikolayev, the regional governor, said in a statement that production at the factory had been suspended but that the strikes had not caused any casualties.
The operations inside Russia came as the Kremlin stepped up its night-time missile and drone strikes and made progress in pushing back the frontline in the north-east Sumy region and in Donetsk in the east.
Related: 'He's a bulldog': the man behind the success of Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb
On Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday morning, Russia launched 479 drones at Ukraine in the war's biggest overnight drone bombardment, the Ukrainian air force said.
About 20 missiles were also fired into Ukraine, targeting mainly central and western regions. The operational command of the Polish armed forces said it scrambled fighter jets in response to the aerial attacks in western Ukraine.
The Rivne region, in western Ukraine, sustained the largest attack since the full-scale war began. One person had been confirmed dead, according to the chief of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Koval.
Video footage shared on social media suggested that the Dubno airbase may have been struck. It has been claimed that this is the home of Ukraine's F-16 fighter jets although this could not be independently verified.
Explosions were also heard in Kyiv, where Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the Kyiv city military administration, reported that an office building in the capital's Darnytsia district had been damaged.
The Ukrainian authorities claimed that their air defences destroyed 277 drones and 19 missiles in mid-flight, with only 10 drones or missiles successfully striking their targets.
In recent weeks, Russian forces have made significant advances in the Sumy region, pushing within 18 miles of the eponymous regional capital, three years after Ukraine's counteroffensive pushed the Kremlin's forces out of the area.
The region's governor, Oleh Hryhorov, said that there was no need yet to evacuate Sumy city, describing the situation as 'tense but under control of the defence forces'.
Ukraine has denied Moscow's claims that Russian forces have pushed through the western border of Donetsk into the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time in the three years of the full-scale war.
Maj Andrii Kovalev, a spokesperson for Ukraine's general staff, said: 'The information is not true. Fighting is ongoing in Donetsk oblast. The enemy did not enter Dnipropetrovsk oblast.'

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

American Military News

40 minutes ago

• American Military News

Zelenskyy says Russia 'chooses to kill' as Putin repeats hard-line demands

This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a massive Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv, which claimed dozens of civilian lives, is a reminder that Russia is disregarding cease-fire efforts and 'chooses to kill.' 'This strike is a reminder to the world that Russia spurns a cease-fire and chooses to kill,' Zelenskyy said on June 19 while visiting the site of a nine-story building that collapsed as a result of what Ukraine said was a direct missile hit during the intense aerial assault two nights earlier. 'This vile attack, carried out in the middle of the night, claimed the lives of 23 civilians,' he said on X. Five people were killed in other parts of the capital and more than 150 people in Kyiv and elsewhere were wounded in the massive attack early on June 17, emergency services said. At least two people were killed in the Black Sea port city of Odesa. 'I am grateful to all our partners who understand that Ukraine must grow stronger every single day. I thank everyone who is ready to exert pressure on Moscow in a way that makes them feel the true cost of this war,' Zelenskyy added. Zelenskyy's statement came after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed he is ready 'to find a solution' to his war on Ukraine and to potentially meet with the Ukrainian president. However, in his remarks at a meeting with representatives of international news agencies on the sidelines of an economic forum in St. Petersburg on June 18, Putin again repeated some of his maximalist positions in comments to foreign media, giving no sign that he is prepared to make substantial concessions. 'We need to find a solution that would not only put an end to the current conflict but also create conditions that would prevent similar situations from recurring in the long term,' Putin said. The remark echoed his repeated statements that any peace deal must address what he calls the 'root causes' of the war — wording he uses to question Ukraine's right to exist, to choose its security partners, and to maintain a strong military. Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul on May 16 and June 2, the first direct peace talks since the initial weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Putin launched on February 24, 2022. The negotiations yielded agreements on prisoner swaps and the exchange of bodies of soldiers killed in the war, but produced no progress toward a cease-fire, let alone a peace deal. Russia and Ukraine sent an unspecified number of sick or wounded prisoners home on June 19, the latest in a series of exchanges. Zelenskyy said the exchange brought back Ukrainian soldiers who had fought all along the front lines, including in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions that were liberated by Ukrainian forces months into the Russian invasion in 2022. 'Most of them had been held captive since 2022… Our goal is to free every single one of them,' Zelenskyy added. Putin said talks could resume at some point after June 22, a date he has previously suggested for a major new swap of prisoners and the bodies of the dead. The Russian leader added, however, that he would only meet Zelenskyy in the 'final phase' of any peace negotiations. Zelenskyy has sought to meet with Putin amid the talks, but the Kremlin says an agreement on a deal must be reached first and Putin repeated his groundless claim that Zelenskyy is not a legitimate leader. 'I am ready to meet with everyone, including Zelenskyy. That is not the issue — if the Ukrainian state trusts someone in particular to conduct negotiations, for God's sake, it can be Zelenskyy,' Putin said. 'I am even ready to meet him — but only if it is some kind of final phase.' The West has slapped sanctions on Russia while NATO has beefed up its forces on its eastern flank since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Rights groups have alleged major rights violations and war crimes committed by Russian forces during their military operations. Western allies have also widely criticized Putin for his refusal to agree to cease-fire terms put forward by US President Donald Trump. On June 19, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha noted that 100 days have passed since Kyiv accepted Trump's proposal for an unconditional, extendable 30-day cease-fire. Russia has kept up and in some cases intensified its bombardments of Ukrainian cities in recent weeks and is pushing to make further gains at several parts of the long front line, which runs from northeastern Ukraine to the Black Sea shore in the south. Putin's wide-ranging briefing took place as Russian air attacks continued on June 19, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying it shot down or otherwise neutralized 88 of the 104 drones fired by Russia. One person was killed in an artillery barrage on Kostyantynivka, a Ukrainian-held city in the Donetsk region, the head of the city military administration, Serhiy Horbunov, said on Facebook. Five people were wounded in Russian artillery and drone strikes on the Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces downed 85 Ukrainian drones over 11 Russian regions and Russian-occupied Crimea. In another sign that he is not ready to make concessions, Putin vowed that Moscow will 'demilitarize' Ukraine through diplomacy or force. At the talks in 2022 and in the recent negotiations, Russia has pushed for radically reducing the size of Ukraine's military, which Kyiv and its backers say would leave it defenseless. 'We will not allow Ukraine to have armed forces that would threaten the Russian Federation and its people,' he said. 'And if we fail to reach a settlement, we will achieve our goals by military means.' Asked about civilian deaths in Russian attacks on Ukraine, Putin repeated Moscow's claim that it does not target civilians, despite ample evidence to the contrary. 'The strikes were carried out against military industries, not residential quarters,' Putin said. The confirmed civilian death toll in Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion is over 13,000, according to the UN, which says many of the growing number of civilian casualties have been caused by Russian long-range missile and drone attacks. Officials say the real civilian toll is like higher. Meanwhile, on June 19, Zelenskyy appointed Hennadiy Shapovalov as commander of Ukraine's land force, replacing Major General Mykhaylo Drapatiy, who resigned following a deadly Russian strike on a troop training area.

Atlantic

an hour ago

• Atlantic

Right Move, Wrong Team

The rulers of Iran bet their regime on the 'Trump always chickens out' trade. They refused diplomacy. They got war. They chose their fate. They deserve everything that has happened to them. Only the world's most committed America-haters will muster sympathy for the self-destructive decision-making of a brutal regime. Striking Iran at this time and under these circumstances was the right decision by an administration and president that usually make the wrong one. An American president who does not believe in democracy at home has delivered an overwhelming blow in defense of a threatened democracy overseas. If a single night's action successfully terminates Trump's Iran war, and permanently ends the Iran nuclear bomb program, then Trump will have retroactively earned the birthday parade he gave himself on June 14. If not, this unilateral war under a president with dictatorial ambitions may lead the United States to some dark and repressive places. Trump did the right thing, but he did that right thing in the wrongest possible way: without Congress, without competent leadership in place to defend the United States against terrorism, and while waging a culture war at home against half the nation. Trump has not put U.S. boots on the ground to fight Iran, but he has put U.S. troops on the ground for an uninvited military occupation of California. Iran started this war. In August 2002, courageous Iranian dissidents revealed to the world an Iranian nuclear enrichment plant in Natanz. Suddenly, all those chanted slogans about destroying Israel moved from the realm of noise and slogans to the realm of intent and plan. Over the next 23 years, Iran invested an enormous amount of wealth and know-how in advancing its project to annihilate the state of Israel. Iran deterred Israel from attacking the nuclear project by deploying missiles and supporting terror groups. After the October 7 terror attacks on Israel, Iran gradually lost its deterrence. Israel defeated Hamas and Hezbollah militarily, and the Iranian-allied regime in Syria collapsed. But Iran did not change its strategy. It was Iran that initiated the direct nation-to-nation air war with Israel. After Israel struck an Iranian compound in Syria in April 2024, Iran fired 300 ballistic missiles into Israel, a warning of what to expect once Iran completed its nuclear program. If the war launched by the rulers of Iran has brought only defeat and humiliation to their country, that does not make those rulers victims of anybody else's aggression. A failed aggressor is still the aggressor. Now Americans face the consequences of Trump's intervention to thwart Iran's aggression. Some of those consequences may be welcome. The attack on Iran is the very first time that President Trump has ever done anything Vladimir Putin did not want him to do. That's one of the reasons I personally doubted he would act strongly against Iran. Maybe Trump can now make a habit of defying Putin—and at last provide the help and support that Ukraine's embattled democracy needs to win its war of self-defense against Russian aggression. The strike on Iran was opposed by the reactionary faction within the Trump administration—and in MAGA media—that backs America's enemies against America's allies. It's very wrong to call this faction 'anti-war.' They want a war against Mexico. They have pushed the United States on the first steps to that war by flying drones over Mexican territory without Mexican permission. This faction is defined not by what it rejects, but by what it admires (Putin's Russia above all) and by who it blames for America's troubles (those it euphemistically condemns as 'globalists'). That reactionary faction lost this round of decision-making. Perhaps now they will lose more rounds. But if some of the domestic consequences of this strike are welcome, others are very dangerous. Presidents have some unilateral war-making power. President Obama did not ask Congress to authorize his air campaign in Libya in 2011. The exact limits of that power are blurry, defined by politics, not law. But Trump's strike on Iran has pushed that line further than it has been pushed since the end of the Vietnam War—and the pushing will become even more radical if Iranian retaliation provokes more U.S. strikes after the first wave. Trump has abused the president's power to impose emergency tariffs, and created a permanent system of revenue-collection without Congress. He asserts that he can ignore rights of due process in immigration cases. He has defied judicial orders to repatriate persons wrongfully sent to a foreign prison paid for by U.S. taxpayer funds. He is ignoring ethics and conflicts of interest laws to enrich himself and his family on a post-Soviet scale—much of that money flowing from undisclosed foreign sources. He has intimidated and punished news organizations for coverage he did not like by abusing regulatory powers over their corporate parents. He has deployed military units to police California over the objections of the elected authorities in that state. This is a president who wants and wields arbitrary power the way no U.S. president has ever done in peacetime. And now it's wartime. Americans have a right and proper instinct to rally around their presidents in time of war. But in the past, that rallying has been met by the equal instincts of presidents to rise above party and faction when the whole nation must be defended. Trump's decision to brief Republican leaders of Congress before the Iran strike, but not their Democratic counterparts, was not merely a petty discourtesy—it confirmed his divisive and authoritarian methods of leadership and warned of worse to come. It is not confidence-inspiring that Pete Hegseth leads the Pentagon. Or that Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, and Kristi Noem are in charge of protecting Americans from Iranian retaliatory terrorism. Or that Tulsi Gabbard is coordinating national intelligence. Or that enemy-of-Ukraine J.D. Vance is poised to inherit all. Trump exercises national power, but he cannot and will not act as a national leader. He sees himself—and has always acted as—the leader of one part of a nation against the rest: the wartime leader of Red America in its culture war against Blue America, as my former Atlantic colleague Ron Brownstein has written. Now this president of half of America has commanded all of America into a global military conflict. With luck, that conflict will be decisive and brief. Let's hope so.

Business Insider

2 hours ago

• Business Insider

NATO ships are at rising risk. Top commanders tell BI it's time to rethink naval defense.

NATO warships are sailing into a dangerous new era of naval warfare in which the threats are growing fast, two senior alliance commanders recently told Business Insider. From the Black Sea to the Red Sea, the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have exposed key vulnerabilities and shown NATO what its naval forces need to operate in risky environments. Dangers to warships these days include threats like hostile drones, missiles, and other naval vessels, capabilities built on rapidly advancing combat technology. So what does NATO need? Layered defenses, cheaper ways to destroy enemy threats, and deeper ammunition stockpiles. Vice Adm. James Morley, the deputy commander of NATO's Joint Force Command Norfolk, told BI that Ukraine and the Red Sea "have revealed the need to be ready to deal with a higher level of intensity than we had previously scaled for, both in terms of stock and in terms of time on the front line." In the Black Sea, Ukrainian forces have repeatedly used domestically produced naval drones to damage and destroy Russian warships, showing the risks that relatively cheap, asymmetric combat solutions pose to conventional naval forces. Far away, at the southern end of the Red Sea, the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have launched missiles and drones at merchant vessels and NATO warships defending international shipping lanes. In its efforts to fend off the Houthi attacks, the US Navy has faced its most intense combat since World War II, US officials have previously said. Morley said NATO warships are at a higher risk because of the number of global actors who are prepared to use military force. Weapons proliferation has given actors who might previously have been unable to threaten advanced navies a new ability to do so. In the case of the Houthis, for instance, the group's missile attacks have raised the level of danger in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden to a level not seen in years. The situation is different in Europe, where NATO warships have not been shot at but tensions are running high. There have been several incidents with Moscow that raise the level of risk. 'The mindset needs to be layered defense' Surface warships face an expanding range of threats, from anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles and torpedoes to enemy aircraft and drones. Some weapons now in play only recently saw combat for the first time. The high operational tempo in the Red Sea has informed Western military planners about what limitations they face regarding magazine capacity, weapons inventory, and reloading capabilities. Morley said that as the weaponry that can threaten warships increases, so must the defensive capabilities aboard the vessels in danger. It's important to invest in missile stockpiles and ensure that NATO defense industrial bases can produce enough and ships can carry enough should they sail into a fight. The days "of driving around with a silo of ammunition that never gets used is sadly now in the past," he said, explaining that "ships routinely come back from the Red Sea, for example, having expended ammunition, and they need to be resupplied and then get back out on patrol." US Navy warships, for instance, have expended significant quantities of SM-series interceptor missiles for air defense. Air defense isn't just about numbers. It's also about dollars. The rise of inexpensive strike drones — some just tens of thousands of dollars apiece — as a tool of naval warfare has NATO forces trying to figure out how they can cheaply defeat these threats without wasting a surface-to-air missile costing millions. The aim is to bring the cost difference between the threat and the interceptor much closer to parity. "I think the mindset needs to be layered defense," Morley said. Warships need the expensive, higher-end missiles to deal with sophisticated threats. But breaking the cost-curve challenge means having a range of capabilities so complex interceptors aren't expended on the simple threats. American Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, for instance, are kitted with options like the M2 Browning .50 caliber machine guns, Mark 38 turret systems, five-inch artillery cannons, and a variety of surface-to-air missiles. These weapons allow the warships to confront a range of threats, though some options, like the deck guns, come with drawbacks, such as permitting threats to get much closer to warships than desired. Big platforms aren't obsolete Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, who oversees alliance modernization efforts, said emerging technologies, like drones, have created new problems for larger platforms like warships, as has been the case in the Black Sea. Anything that exists on the water could effectively be hit. Vandier identified uncrewed systems as one of the biggest changes in naval warfare over the past decade and said one risk is that a warship could be overwhelmed by a swarm of drones. "You need to find ways on the ships to be protected from that and to engage multiple targets at the same time," he said. That could be kinetic, involving a physical strike, or some alternative, like electronic warfare. NATO is working to incorporate lessons learned from Ukraine and the Red Sea into its combat training. At last month's Formidable Shield 25 exercise, US sailors practiced using the deck guns to shoot down small quadcopter drones that they could face in a swarm attack. They also practiced defending against uncrewed surface vehicles like the ones Ukraine has used to batter Russia's Black Sea fleet. Exercises such as Formidable Shield allow allied navies to practice navigating air defense challenges and learn how to engage cheaper threats with cheaper defenses, thus saving the more expensive methods for the higher-end threats. Despite the growing number of threats to warships, Vandier said the rise of drones doesn't necessarily render them obsolete. Aircraft carriers, the flagships of a fleet, can project force globally with embarked aviation. They travel in heavily defended strike groups, making the carriers particularly formidable and hard to reach for enemy attacks. "To get to a carrier, you have layers," Vandier said. "It's a battle between the shield and the sword. My personal feeling is that the story is not finished for the big platforms. Not yet."