Blast on Russian airbase near Ukraine shows Ukraine's fight

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Blast on Russian airbase near Ukraine shows Ukraine's fight

A blast hit an airbase in Russia on Tuesday, the latest in a series of apparent Ukrainian drone attacks that show an ability to strike at the heart of Russian territory and suggest a new boldness in Kyiv's fight against Moscow's war.

An airfield in Kursk in southwest Russia, near the Ukrainian border, was ablaze on Tuesday morning, with regional governor Roman Starovoit saying the incident was the result of a drone attack.

Photos and videos verified by NBC News showed a large fire at the airfield caused by a suspected oil tanker, with smoke trailing miles across the sky.

Similar explosions were seen on Monday at the Engels air base outside the city of Saratov and at Ryazan, located just 125 miles southwest of Moscow and hundreds of miles away from the Ukrainian border.

The base of Engels houses Russia's strategic bombing fleet of tu 160 and tu 95 planes, which have been used on long-range bombing missions to Ukraine and can be adapted to carry nuclear weapons.

Ukraine has not directly claimed responsibility, but officials have jokingly suggested that its military may be behind the incidents. Russia's defense ministry blamed Kyiv's forces for the two blasts Monday, in which it said three maintenance personnel died and two planes were damaged.

Analysts were cautious about the military impact of the attacks on strategic sites far from the front lines, but said they had undermined Russian confidence in the country's air defenses and provided a moral boost for Ukrainian civilians preparing for a long winter under bombardment.

Matthew Ford, associate professor at Swedish Defense University in Stockholm, said that signaling is important for the Ukrainians: They need to know that they are hitting back, given the amount of pain and devastation and general discomfort that is being felt in Ukraine.

Some Russian strategic resources are being targeted from a moral point of view. Russia has the firepower to carry on bombing Ukraine, he said. It may be a pain but if they can move aircraft and infrastructure, they can put up more security around air bases. The Kremlin said that the attacks were inflicted by Soviet-made UAV or unmanned aerial vehicles. This suggests that Ukraine is not using the billions of dollars worth of lethal aid it has received from the United States and other Western allies in attacks on Russian soil, which Washington has feared could cause an escalation.