MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Ukrainian drone targeted a military airfield in Russia’s Novgorod region, causing a fire and damaging one warplane, Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday.
The ministry said nobody was hurt and the fire was quickly extinguished. The Novgorod region lies northwest of Moscow, hundreds of miles (km) from Russia’s border with Ukraine.
“As a result of the terrorist attack on the territory of the airfield, a fire broke out in the parking lot of aircraft, which was quickly eliminated by fire fighters. One aircraft was damaged,” the ministry said in a statement.
Drone air strikes deep inside Russia have increased in recent months. One smashed into a building in central Moscow on Friday after Russian air defences shot it down, disrupting air traffic at all civilian airports of the Russian capital.
Earlier on Saturday, the Defence Ministry said Russia’s air defence forces had shot down a Ukraine-launched missile overnight over the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 and which has also seen a surge in drone and missile attacks.
Ukraine typically does not comment on who is behind attacks on Russian territory or Crimea, although officials have publicly expressed satisfaction over them.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Gareth Jones and Frances Kerry)
