MOSCOW (Reuters) -Ukraine struck Russian regions with a major drone and missile attack overnight, damaging at least two factories and forcing schools to close in a major southern Russian city, according to Russian officials and media.
The Shot Telegram channel said that Russia had downed more than 200 Ukrainian drones and five U.S.-made ATACMS ballistic missiles.
“The enemy has organized a massive combined strike on the territory of the Russian regions,” the Two Majors war blogger said.
Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk region in western Russia, said Ukraine had launched a major missile attack but did not say which missiles had been used.
The Russian defence ministry, which reports on such attacks, made no immediate comment. Reuters was unable to immediately confirm the reports.
In the Russian city of Engels, home to an air base where Russia’s nuclear bombers are based, Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said an industrial enterprise had been damaged by a drone but gave no more details.
Busargin said that classes in schools in Saratov and Engels would be held remotely. Flight restrictions were imposed in Kazan, Saratov, Penza, Ulyanovsk and Nizhnekamsk, Russia’s aviation watchdog said.
Nizhnekamsk, in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, is home to the major Taneco refinery. Shot said attack sirens were sounded at the refinery. Reuters was unable to immediately verify the report.
Russia fired a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as “Oreshnik”, or Hazel Tree, at Ukraine on Nov. 21 in what President Vladimir Putin said was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with U.S. and British missiles.
Putin, after those attacks, said that the Ukraine war was escalating towards a global conflict after the United States and Britain allowed Ukraine to hit Russia with their weapons, and warned the West that Moscow could strike back.
President-elect Donald Trump has pushed for a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war quickly, leaving Washington’s long-term support for Ukraine in question.
Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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