UKRAINE hit a major Russian missile depot yesterday, sending a mushroom cloud billowing into the sky, as Moscow retaliated by “carpet bombing” a city with more than 30 strikes.
The latest carnage came amid talks in London between defence chiefs on a so-called European peacekeeping force — without any peace to keep at present.
Ukraine hit a major Russian missile depot near the city of Saratov, sending a mushroom cloud billowing into the sky[/caption]
Moscow retaliated by ‘carpet bombing’ a city with more than 30 strikes[/caption]
Video footage showed smoke rising after the overnight Ukrainian drone attack on the Engels airbase near the city of Saratov, around 450 miles south east of Moscow.
The base hosts Russia’s Tupolev Tu-160 long range nuclear bombers and is more than 400 miles from the nearest Ukrainian territory.
Moscow sources claimed its forces downed more than 130 Ukrainian drones, including 54 in Saratov.
The governor of the Saratov region, Roman Busargin, said civilians living close to the base had been evacuated from the area.
Russia had also unleashed its own overnight assault, with more than 30 missiles hitting the city of Kropyvnytskyi, damaging residential properties and injuring ten people, including four children.
Arkadyi Raikovych, the regional governor, said: “Kropyvnytskyi has survived through the most massive enemy attack.”
Meanwhile, the US has denied it deleted a database of Ukrainian children kidnapped and sold by Russia.
The US State Department confirmed it had cut support to a Yale University project that kept track of the stolen kids as it was not “in America’s interests”.
A spokeswoman insisted yesterday: “The conspiracy theory about data being deleted is untrue.
“The data exists. It was not in the State Department’s control.
“It was the people running that framework, but we know who is running the data and the website, and we know fully that the data exists, and it’s not been deleted and it’s not missing.”
