UPDATED: Ukraine says it hit Russian military airfield in Lipetsk region

The Ukrainian military said on Friday it had hit a Russian military airfield in the Lipetsk region of western Russia overnight, damaging stockpiles of guided bombs and causing a series of detonations.

Kyiv has been attacking Russian airbases to reduce Moscow’s ability to use its warplanes to strike targets in Ukraine and hammer front lines with guided bombs and missiles. Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“Several sources of ignition were recorded, a large fire broke out and multiple detonations were observed,” Kyiv’s military said on the Telegram messaging app.

Russian Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 warplanes were based at the airfield, it said.

A security source told Reuters that the attack was carried out by drones as dozens of planes and helicopters stood on the airfield, as well as a warehouse containing 700 guided bombs.

The Russian governor of the Lipetsk region, Igor Artamonov said a “massive attack” by Ukrainian drones had caused explosions, disrupted power supply and wounded nine people.

The Interfax news agency cited local emergency officials as saying a fire had broken out at the airbase outside the regional capital.

The Ukrainian source said most of the aircraft did not have time to take off.

“In early August we cleared the Morozovsk airfield of guided bombs and fighters, today it’s the turn of Lipetsk-2,” the source said.

Last Saturday, Ukraine said it had hit an ammunition depot at the Morozovsk airfield, where it said Russian forces stored guided aerial bombs and other equipment and had a number of fuel storage facilities.

Ukraine’s ability to strike military targets deep inside Russia has been hampered by its lack of long-range missiles. It has been appealing to the West to allow it to use Western-supplied weapons for such strikes.

Ukraine justifies Kursk attack in first acknowledgment of incursion into Russia

Ukraine has publicly justified its attack into Russian territory for the first time, amid reports that its forces are advancing towards a village 13 miles (20km) inside the Kursk region on the third day of its incursion.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to the president’s office, said “the root cause of any escalation”, including into Kursk, was “unequivocal aggression” on the part of Russia in believing it could invade Ukraine with impunity.

The statement is the first acknowledgment by any leading Ukrainian official of the ongoing offensive amid silence from the country’s military on events in the Russian region. “War is war, with its own rules, where the aggressor inevitably reaps corresponding outcomes,” Podolyak added.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appeared to allude to the incursion on Thursday, saying “everyone can see that the Ukrainian army knows how to surprise” in comments at an event to unveil a new military app.

Later on Thursday, Zelenskiy made another apparent allusion to the offensive in his nightly television address, saying: “Russia brought the war to our land and should feel what it has done.”

Russian military bloggers, currently the most accurate sources of information, reported that fighting was taking place on the highway east of Korenevo, 13 miles north of the border, while the western part of Sudzha, about six miles into Russia, appeared to be under Ukrainian control.

Russia has declared a state of emergency in Kursk and local officials told the Tass news agency that 3,000 civilians had been evacuated following an attack that has clearly caught Moscow off guard.