Ukraine said over the weekend that it had struck a storage and maintenance depot for long-range Shahed drones in Russia’s Oryol region, adding that this had “significantly reduced” Russia’s ability to launch mass drone attacks on Ukraine.
Ukraine military’s general staff said, in a statement on social media, that the attack took place on Thursday and was conducted by the country’s air force.
“As a result of the strike, a depot for storage, maintenance and repair of Shahed kamikaze drones, made of several protected concrete structures, was destroyed,” it said.
“This military operation has significantly reduced the enemy’s potential in terms of conducting air raids of strike drones on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.”
Moscow has not made any comment on the attack.
Russia has regularly launched missile and drone attacks on Ukraine throughout its 34-month invasion.
For the past several months, Moscow has launched near-daily barrages of dozens of drones at Ukraine, hoping to damage its infrastructure and wear down air defences leaving them less able to shoot down missiles.
Air Force of Ukraine had stated earlier that it had downed 15 out of 16 drones launched by Russia in an attack last week, with the other one disappearing from radars.
Russia attacked the energy system of Ukraine and some cities with cruise and ballistic missiles plus drones last week. Half a million people in the Kharkiv region were left without heating, in temperatures just a few degrees Celsius above zero, while there were blackouts in the capital Kyiv and elsewhere.
Russia has intensified attacks on the Ukrainian energy sector since the spring of this year, damaging almost half of its generating capacity and causing prolonged blackouts. Russia’s Defence Ministry confirmed it had conducted a “massive strike” on what it said were critical energy facilities supporting the work of Kyiv’s “military-industrial complex”.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK said its generating facilities were attacked, with power equipment seriously damaged, in the 13th large-scale assault on the energy sector of the war-torn nation this year.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
