Ukraine launched dozens of drones at Russia early Tuesday, sparking fires at a gas storage site and damaging industrial facilities hundreds of kilometers from the frontline, authorities said.
The barrage forced schools in the southwestern Saratov region to close, while at least nine airports in central and western Russia temporarily halted traffic, according to officials.
The head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, Andriy Kovalenko, said five Russian cities had been targeted.
Moscow and Kyiv have upped strikes on one another ahead of US President-elect Donald Trump‘s inauguration next week, as both sides seek to gain the upper hand in potential negotiations aimed at settling the nearly three-year conflict.
In the energy-rich region of Tatarstan, a drone hit a gas storage tank, sending flames and thick smoke billowing toward the sky near the city of Kazan, according to media and the regional government.
Tatarstan local media said a liquefied gas storage base was hit, and published images showing flames and black smoke.
In the Saratov region, about 500 kilometers (311 miles) southwest of Kazan, a “massive drone attack” damaged two industrial sites, according to the regional governor.
Schools in the cities of Saratov and Engels will hold classes online on Tuesday because of the attacks, he said.
Firefighters had only the day before managed to put out a blaze at an oil depot in the city of Engels, which was hit by a Ukrainian drone strike on January 8.
‘Painful Strikes’
Ukraine regularly hits military and energy sites in Russia, part of what it calls “fair” retaliation for Russian strikes on its territory since Moscow sent troops into its neighbor in February 2022.
Among the Russian cities targeted in Tuesday’s barrage were Engels, Saratov, Kazan, Bryansk, and Tula, Kovalenko said.
Oil refineries, oil depots, factories producing weapons components, and air defense systems were all attacked, he added.
Kovalenko said a weapons manufacturing facility — the Orgsintez plant — had been “damaged” in Kazan, claiming it was of “direct importance to the Russian military-industrial complex.”
One Ukrainian blogger, who analyzes Russian strikes on Ukraine, wrote that the overnight barrage on Russia was “probably one of the most effective” of the conflict.
There had been “painful strikes on enemy military-industrial complexes and energy infrastructure in places that usually don’t get many strikes,” the blogger, who goes by Nikolayevski Vanyok, wrote on Telegram.
The Ukrainian air force said separately that its air defense systems had downed 58 Iranian-designed drones launched by Russia, while another 21 were destroyed with electronic interference systems or crashed.
A Ukrainian official in the Kharkiv region meanwhile said Tuesday morning that a 52-year-old resident of the town of Kozachya Lopan had been killed by Russian artillery fire.
The Ukrainian overnight attacks come at a difficult moment for Kyiv’s forces across the front line, particularly in the eastern Donetsk region.
City authorities in Pokrovsk, Russia’s main target in the region, repeated a call Tuesday for remaining residents to flee the town where around 60,000 people lived before Russia launched its offensive in February 2022.
Fighting has been intense in the weeks ahead of Donald Trump‘s inauguration on January 20.
The Republican has said he wants to end the conflict within “24 hours” once in office, sparking fears in Ukraine it will be forced to make major territorial concessions in exchange for peace.
