Ukraine shot down a Russian strategic bomber 300 km from its border yesterday after the warplane took part in an air strike that killed at least eight people, including two children, in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, Kyiv said.
Missiles rained down on the city of Dnipro and the surrounding region in the early hours, damaging residential buildings, the main train station and wounding at least 28 civilians, regional officials said.
Russia has stepped up its long-range aerial assaults on Ukraine’s energy system and other targets in recent weeks, ratcheting up the pressure on Kyiv far behind the front lines where Russian forces have been slowly advancing in the east.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called for urgent supplies of air defences from Kyiv’s allies as Ukraine’s stocks dwindle due to a slowdown in vital Western military aid.
“Russia must be held accountable for its terror, and every missile, every Shahed (drone) must be shot down,” he said. “The world can guarantee this, and our partners have the necessary capabilities.”
In a first for Ukraine during the invasion, Kyiv’s air force commander and military spy agency said they had shot down a Russian Tu-22M3 strategic bomber that had fired missiles at Ukraine during the overnight attack.
An intelligence source told Reuters that Kyiv had used a modified S-200 air defence missile for the attack, but did not say where it had been fired from. The S-200 is a Soviet-era long-range surface-to-air missile system.
Unconfirmed social media footage showed a warplane with its tail on fire spiralling towards the ground.
The Russian defence ministry said the bomber had crashed in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, hundreds of kilometres from Ukrainian-controlled territory, as it returned to base after carrying out a combat mission.
But it said the crash appeared to have been caused by technical malfunction.
The four Russian air force crew members ejected from the warplane; two were rescued, one died and a rescue operation was under way for the fourth, the Russian regional governor said.
Civilians in a residential building that was hit in Dnipro said they were shaken up. The five-storey building’s top floor was partially destroyed, officials said. Firemen battled to put out a fire early in the morning.
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