In contrast to Ukraine’s claims that Russia has been launching significant artillery barrages on its cities over the past 24 hours, Moscow claimed on Monday that its forces shot down a Ukrainian drone near a long-range bomber base located deep inside Russia.
The long-range strategic bombers that would have been deployed to attack Ukrainian cities and infrastructure are stationed at Russia’s Engels air base, where the drone was purportedly flying.
Three air force members were killed in the event, according to a statement from the Russian defence ministry, but no planes were damaged.
However, other planes were reportedly destroyed, according to social media posts in Russia and Ukraine. The reports could not be independently verified.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, declared on Sunday that he was open to discussions as the war entered its eleventh month. He also accused Ukraine and its Western supporters of refusing to participate in dialogue.
But despite this, his forces continued their unrelenting assaults, with the Ukrainian military reporting early on Monday that dozens of towns in the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzia regions had been shelled.
“In the Kherson direction, the enemy continues artillery shelling of populated areas along the right bank of the Dnipro River,” the Ukrainian military said.
Nearly 20 Russian targets were attacked by Ukrainian forces, it was reported.
In five Ukrainian districts, including the capital Kyiv, emergency limitations on the use of electricity were put in place on Monday, according to the operator of the country’s energy infrastructure.
The second attack this month targeted the Engels air base, which is close to Saratov, approximately 730 kilometres (450 miles) southeast of Moscow, and hundreds of kilometres away from the frontlines in Ukraine.
It had earlier been struck on December 5 in what Russia claimed were drone assaults by Ukraine on two Russian air sites that day.
The air base is one of two strategic bomber bases where Russia’s nuclear capabilities for air delivery is housed. Kyiv, which has never openly claimed responsibility for assaults inside of Russia, made no comments.
“A Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) was shot down at low altitude while approaching the Engels military airfield in the Saratov region,” the defence ministry statement said.
According to the report, falling drone debris claimed the lives of three Russian personnel.
Russia possesses between 60 and 70 strategic bombers of the Tu-95MS Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack variants. Both have the capacity to transport conventional weapons as well as nuclear bombs and cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.
In attacks that Kyiv has deemed to be war crimes, Moscow has employed its air force to launch cruise missiles.
Roman Busargin, the regional governor of Saratov, stated on Monday that there was no threat to locals and no civil infrastructure facilities had been harmed in the most recent incident at the base.
Putin reiterated his willingness to negotiate on Sunday, a position that the United States, Ukraine’s strongest supporter, has previously dismissed as a bluff given the constant Russian attacks.
“We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them – we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are,” Putin said in an interview on Rossiya 1 state television.
According to a Volodymyr Zelenskiy adviser, Putin must admit that it is Russia that is unwilling to engage in negotiations.
“Russia single-handedly attacked Ukraine and is killing citizens,” the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter. “Russia doesn’t want negotiations, but tries to avoid responsibility.”
Millions of people in Ukraine are without energy as a result of Russian strikes on their power plants, and Zelenskiy declared in a speech to the country that Moscow would try to make the final days of 2022 gloomy and challenging.
The Kupiansk-Lyman line of contact had seen roughly 60 Ukrainian personnel killed the day before, according to the Russian defence ministry, which also claimed that many pieces of Ukrainian military hardware had been destroyed.
The reports have not been verified.
While Kyiv claims it won’t stop until every Russian soldier has been expelled from Ukraine, the Kremlin asserts that it will fight until all of its territorial goals have been attained.
