The Russian Defense Ministry says the country's military and security forces killed 234 fighters while thwarting an incursion into Russian border regions earlier in the day.
In a statement, the ministry blamed the attack on the “Kyiv regime” and “Ukraine’s terrorist formations,” insisting that the Russian military and border forces were able to stop the attackers and avert a cross-border raid. It also said the attackers lost seven tanks and five armored vehicles.
The reports of border fighting earlier on Tuesday were murky, and it was impossible to ascertain with any certainty what was unfolding in Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions. Cross-border attacks in the area have occurred sporadically since the war began and have been the subject of claims and counterclaims, as well as disinformation and propaganda.
Meanwhile, one Ukrainian drone struck and set ablaze an oil refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, according to regional governor Gleb Nikitin. That region is located some about 775 kilometers (480 miles) from the Ukraine border.
In another deep strike, a drone was shot down in the Moscow region, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Though it was brought down well south of the city center, the drone was close to Zhukovsky Airport, one of Mocow’s four international airports.
Another drone hit an oil depot in Oryol, 116 kilometers (95 miles) from Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last year that his country had developed a weapon that hit a target 700 kilometers (400 miles) away, in an apparent reference to drones.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukrainian drones were also intercepted Tuesday over the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, Leningrad and Tula regions of Russia.
Kyiv has staged increasingly bold attacks behind the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line running through eastern and southern Ukraine. It has also increasingly deployed sea drones in the Black Sea, where it claims to have sunk Russian warships.
Kyiv’s forces are hoping for more military supplies from Ukraine’s Western partners, but in the meantime are struggling against a bigger and better-provisioned Russian army that is pressing hard at certain front-line points inside Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said that recent Russian advances have been halted and that the battlefield situation is now significantly better than in the past three months.
“We had some difficulties due to the lack of artillery shells, long-range weapons, sky blocking and the high density of Russian drones,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with France’s BFM TV and Le Monde published late Monday on the Ukrainian presidential website.
Also on Tuesday, an Il-76 heavy-lift transport plane of the Russian air force with 15 people on board crashed while taking off from an air base in the Ivanovo region in western Russia, the Defense Ministry said. Its statement didn't specify whether there were any survivors. The ministry said that an engine fire during takeoff was the likely cause of the crash.
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