In one of the most unusual actions of war, two air bases inside Russia were attacked by drones on Saturday the 19th and Monday the 21st, resulting in at least one Tupolev Tu-22M3 strategic bomber being destroyed or damaged in the first of attacks, at the Soltsi airfield (Novgorod Oblast, south of Saint Petersburg). Images on social networks whose authenticity has not been confirmed showed a plane engulfed in flames. The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the event – although it apparently minimized the damage – but did not report the second attack, against the Shaikovka base (Kaluga Oblast, southwest of Moscow).
It's not the first time something like this has happened. On December 5, 2022, the Engels-2 base, near Saratov (700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border) and the Dyagilevo base, southeast of Moscow, were attacked by drones. In the latter, a Tu-22 ended up with its wings destroyed and three soldiers aboard a truck were killed. Inherited from the Soviet design of the sixties, although renewed, the Tu-22M3 is a long-range supersonic twin-engine capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Russia has 60 devices, according to the Ukrainian expert Mikhail Zhirojov.
Neither on that occasion nor on this occasion Kyiv acknowledged the action. The novelty, this time, is that Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) claimed responsibility for the attacks, claiming that it had coordinated "groups of saboteurs" inside Russia. The result would have been one bomber destroyed at Soltsi plus two damaged, and two others also hit at Shaikovka.
The Russian Ministry of Defense had pointed out that they were quadropter-type drones. This led the British Ministry of Defense to point out in its daily report that "if this is true, it adds weight to the assessment that some drone attacks (...) are launched from Russian territory", since this type of device with four propellers – although there are large ones – they do not have sufficient autonomy to reach the Soltsi base from outside Russia. The Moscow Times portal joined this version, recalling that “the question of sabotage was discussed in meetings between Vladimir Putin and the security forces. They swore that this would not happen again, but no one could give a one hundred percent guarantee.
Meanwhile, the man who can least guarantee anything in Russia, Yevgueni Prigozhin, returned yesterday to occupy headlines in the wake of the Niger crisis. Posing loaded with military equipment in a desert landscape that could be assumed to be the Sahel and claiming to be 50 degrees, the head of the Wagner Group said he was recruiting men and "making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa freer."
General Sergei Surovikin, a friend of Prigozhin, disgraced and removed from circulation for his failed coup, has been formally dismissed as head of the Russian Aerospace Forces, reported yesterday Alexei Venediktov, former director of the Echo of Moscow radio station, now closed . It remains to be seen if the fate of the Tu-22s, attacked at their own bases, had something to do with it.
