Ukraine admitted for the first time on Friday that it launched a drone attack on a Russian airport this week from Russian territory, as Kyiv seeks to shift hostilities to Russia amid a counteroffensive to liberate the occupied territories, AFP reported.

During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, Ukrainian drones fired at the airport of Pskov, a Russian city located near the border with Estonia, Latvia and Belarus, almost 700 kilometers from Ukraine.

“The drones that were used to attack the Kresty air base in Pskov were launched from the territory of Russia,” assured the head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov.

This is the first time that Kyiv has admitted that it is operating on the territory of Russia, where there have been not only numerous drone strikes, but also alleged sabotage, in addition to armed incursions.

“We are operating from the territory of Russia,” Budanov emphasized in an interview with The War Zone website.

For its part, the Kremlin refused to comment on this statement.

“Notable progress” of Ukrainian troops

According to Budanov, during the attack on Pskov, two Russian military aircraft were destroyed and two were seriously damaged. The War Zone released satellite images showing charred devices.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyi on Thursday praised, according to him, the use of new Ukrainian weapons with a range of 700 km – approximately the distance from the Ukrainian border to Pskov, where a Russian military air base was engulfed in flames the day before, without mentioning specific facts. such cases as in Pskov.

The United States, Ukraine’s main military and financial backer, on Friday hailed “significant progress” on the front in the past 72 hours from the south.

Russia, for its part, announced the capture of new “key positions” near the city of Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine, the only part of the front where Moscow’s troops are on the offensive.

The fight will gradually move to the territory of Russia

On Friday, the adviser to the president Mykhailo Podolyak said that the number of drone attacks on the territory of Russia will increase.

“As far as Russia is concerned … the number of attacks by unidentified drones from the territory of the Russian Federation is increasing, and the number of these attacks will increase,” Podolyak told Reuters.

“Because this is the stage of the war… when hostilities are gradually transferred to the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said in an interview from his office in Kyiv.

Drone attacks on Russia have increased dramatically in scale and frequency in recent weeks, culminating this week in attacks that hit six Russian regions overnight.

Ukraine generally approves of such attacks, but does not openly claim direct responsibility for them. His Western allies prohibit him from using the weapons he donates to strike Russia, although they argue that Kyiv has the right to carry out such attacks on military targets with its own weapons.

Propagandist Solovyov claims that the drones that attacked Pskov were launched from the Baltic countries

After the attack on Pskov on Tuesday, Russian propagandist Volodymyr Solovyov said that the drones were launched from the territory of the Baltic countries, which are NATO members, and called on his broadcast on August 30 to attack these states, the former Soviet republics, which “will wipe them off the face of the earth.” .

“Let’s break the topic into several topics. Pskov is located near the border with NATO. Where were they launched from, from Ukraine, you mean? Oh, how could it not be! From the territory of the Baltic countries? If so, then we must let the Baltic countries be destroyed Let them be wiped off the face of the earth!” said Solovyov, quoted by NewsMaker, according to News.ro.

Meanwhile, drone attacks on several targets in Russia continued overnight from Thursday to Friday, the BBC reports. Reports, currently unconfirmed, claim that a factory of electronic components for missiles in the city of Lyubert, Moscow region, was hit. However, the mayor of Moscow Serhiy Sobyanin stated in his Telegram channel that the drones over Lyubertsy were shot down without damage or casualties.

As during previous terrorist attacks in the Moscow region, several flights from Moscow airports were delayed or canceled on Friday morning.

The governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoyt, for his part, said that in the city of Kurchatov, near the Kursk NPP, a residential and administrative building was hit.