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Today, there are important updates from the Russian Federation.
Here, Russia stripped air defense systems from military bases and strategic sites across the country to shield Moscow ahead of the Victory Day parade, creating gaps that Ukraine immediately began exploiting with some of its deepest and most damaging strikes of the war. What followed was not just a wave of attacks on military infrastructure, but growing evidence that even some of Russia’s most sensitive security sites were left far less protected than expected.
Recently, Zelensky said he had assigned Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence separate missions targeting Russia’s air-defense network. This comes after Moscow concentrated additional systems around the capital ahead of the May ninth Victory Day parade. The large scale redeployment of air defenses from other parts of Russia created exploitable gaps across the country, allowing Ukraine to expand long-range strikes against key military sites that Russia had left far less protected.
To exploit these newly emerged opportunities, the Ukrainian forces carried out one of the deepest confirmed strikes inside Russia, targeting the Shagol military airfield in Chelyabinsk, approximately one thousand and seven hundred kilometers from Ukraine’s border. Based on satellite reconnaissance, at least three deep-strike munitions hit their targets, destroying two Su-fifty-seven fighters, one Su-thirty-four fighter bomber, and another unidentified Su series aircraft. The strike was especially significant because the Su-fifty-seven is Russia’s most advanced fifth-generation fighter jet, with only around thirty believed to be in service. Before this operation, Ukraine had managed to damage just one Su-fifty-seven during the entire war, making the destruction of two in a single strike a major blow to one of Russia’s most limited and high-value aviation assets. In a separate operation in the Voronezh Oblast, roughly one hundred and fifty kilometers from the front line, Ukrainian kamikaze drones struck two Russian helicopters, a Mi-seventeen and a Mi-twenty-eight, while they were undergoing maintenance. The drones hit the engine compartments in the rear section of the aircraft, avoiding the main rotor blades while maximizing damage to critical systems. The strike also caused casualties among technical personnel servicing the helicopters, including the death of one technician. To enable follow-on strikes, Ukrainian FP-two kamikaze UAV targeted multiple Pantsir and Tor air defense systems along with two radar stations. During the operation, Ukrainian drones also hit a telecommunications center and six airspace control systems, further degrading Russia’s air-defense coordination and battlefield support capabilities.
Ukrainian intelligence also found that major Russian ammunition arsenals had become undefended. In order to capitalize on this, Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s seventeenth Main Missile and Artillery Directorate arsenal in Kedrovka, targeting a deep-rear ammunition depot. It was responsible for the long term storage, maintenance, and distribution of artillery shells, missiles, and other munitions used to supply Russian forces at the front. In parallel, Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed successful strikes on two Russian explosives facilities, including production buildings at the Sverdlov Plant in Dzerzhinsk. The facility is one of Russia’s largest producers of military explosives and plays a critical role in filling aviation and artillery munitions, anti-tank missile warheads, and FAB aerial bombs, later converted into guided glide bombs.
In addition to the strikes on airfields and the Russian defense industrial base, Ukraine struck the site of Russia’s forty second Special Motorized Regiment in Sevastopol. The site is also used by the Federal Service of National Guard Troops, Rosgvardia. This is notable because Putin heavily relies on them to maintain his grip on power, and leaving their Headquarters unprotected shows how Russia is in dire need of air defenses.
In a separate but connected deep-strike operation, a converted A-twenty-two light aircraft attacked targets in Grozny, approximately nine hundred kilometers from the Ukrainian border. The strike targeted the Khankali district, which hosts one of Russia’s largest military bases, as well as a building linked to the Federal Security Service. This indicates a deliberate approach to degrade the FSB’s capabilities in a region where Russia is afraid of separatism, which is why they need to contain it with the FSB. In addition to the strikes on FSB complexes, Ukrainian FP two drones carried out a series of coordinated mid-range strikes against the logistics base of a Russian unit belonging to the fifth Army.
