There was no immediate reaction or claim of responsibility from Ukraine.
Russia normally blames any attacks on its own territory and occupied parts of Ukraine on Kyiv, which normally refrains from official public comments, apart from occasional sarcastic remarks by its top officials.
However this time Ukraine’s air force chief appeared to acknowledge the attack.
Mykola Oleschuk, commander of Ukraine’s Air Forces, thanked his pilots for their “excellent combat work” on Telegram, as he said “the occupiers” were still recovering in Sevastopol. “More to come,” Oleschuk added.
The incident is the latest in a series of attacks on Russian soil and occupied Ukrainian territories, as Kyiv appears to be delivering on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s promise to bring the war home to Russia.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk came under fire from Kyiv after it emerged that he thwarted a major attack on the Russian navy in Sevastopol last year, refusing a request to use his Starlink satellite service as he did not want to be directly drawn into the war.
But since then, Ukraine has ramped up its efforts to strike behind enemy lines.
Last month, a Russian warship appeared to have suffered serious damage after a sea drone attack on the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in southern Russia. A day later, Moscow said a Russian tanker under U.S. sanctions was hit by a Ukrainian drone near a strategic bridge in the Kerch Strait that links Russia to the annexed Crimean Peninsula.
That bridge, a pet project of President Vladimir Putin, came under attack twice in less than a year. Moscow blamed Ukraine for hitting the span last October, seriously damaging it, and in July, in a attack that killed two civilians.
Meanwhile, drone attacks on Moscow and major Russian cities are now a nearly daily occurrence, while Ukraine’s military pushes for a breakthrough in its counteroffensive on the ground.
