A Kiev military plane would have carried out a bombing raid on Russian territory for the first time, near the border. The news, released by a Ukrainian military source cited by Sky News, is not officially confirmed, but takes on particular significance because it comes after the authorization granted to Kiev by many NATO countries, including the USA, to use the weapons supplied by them, and while the delivery of the first American-made F-16 jets is expected in the summer.
It is clear that Ukraine is trying to respond with these means to a difficult situation on the ground, particularly in the Donetsk region, where Moscow today announced the conquest of another village, Staromayorskoye. Denis Pushilin, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, formally annexed by Russia in 2022, said Moscow’s forces control “more than 60 percent” of the territory, though not yet major locations, such as the cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
The Donetsk region currently represents the “most difficult” situation at the front, President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted. And this is also because Ukrainian forces were forced to move some of the most trained and reliable units from this side of the front to the Kharkiv front to counter an advance of Russian troops from the north-eastern border. Zelensky instead denied, as a “propaganda operation”, the announcement made yesterday evening by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov according to which his fighters had also entered the Sumy region, north-west of Kharkiv, conquering a village border. The Ukrainian military source who reported on the first airstrike in Russia said a “command base” in the Belgorod region was hit, but did not provide any details. Meanwhile, a senior Air Force officer, Sergii Holubtsov, said that some of the F-16s that Kiev will receive from Western countries – first and foremost Denmark – will be kept on bases abroad. To which Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the Defense Committee of the Duma (the lower house of the Russian Parliament) responded by warning that if these jets take part in combat missions, Russian forces will also be able to target the airports from which they will depart, “with all the consequences of the case”. Therefore with the risk that bases of NATO countries will also be hit.
Meanwhile, the Russian region of Belgorod continues to be bombed by Ukrainian forces with drones and rockets. The governor said three people, including two women, were injured in the morning in the town of Shebeniko. Furthermore, in the same area, four people, including a Rossiya 24 television operator and three soldiers, were injured by a mine explosion.
#Russia #Ukraine #war #Kiev #raid #jets #Russian #territory #proRussians #Donetsk #hands #Moscow