Ukraine says Flamingo missiles hit Samara rocket hub 900 km inside Russia

Ukraine said it struck the Progress Centre in Samara and the Savasleyka air base with long-range missiles. The attacks signalled Kyiv's push to hit Russian military industry deep behind the front.

In Short

• Russia said it repelled a massive missile assault, with localised damage
• Long-range Ukrainian strikes have tripled since January, conflict monitor ACLED said
• Repeated deep attacks are forcing Moscow to disperse air defences wider

Ukraine said on Saturday that it had carried out long-range strikes on targets in Russia, including industrial infrastructure in the southwestern Samara region and the Savasleyka air base. A Russian official said air defences had repelled a "massive" missile attack on Samara, but there was "localised damage" to the city's industrial sites and medical assistance was given to those injured.

The strikes came as both sides reported fresh drone and missile attacks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv had hit the Progress Centre in Samara, which works under the Russian space agency Roscosmos and is involved in making rocket technology and electronics. In southeastern Ukraine, meanwhile, a Russian strike on an apartment block killed a three-month-old baby and wounded 11 people, local officials said.

Writing on social media, Zelenskyy said the strike on the Progress Centre was carried out using Ukraine's domestically produced Flamingo missiles. He said the site is about 900 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. He also said Russia's Savasleyka air base, around 700 kilometres from the front line, had been hit. "Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia -- through concrete damage to specific facilities," Zelenskyy wrote.

Ukraine has increased its long-range aerial attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities as it seeks to reduce Moscow's war revenue and bring the effects of the invasion, now in its fifth year, closer to Russia. While most of Ukraine's strikes have a range of under 200 kilometres, longer-range attacks have risen sharply this year. According to ACLED, an independent conflict monitor, Ukraine launched three times as many such strikes in July as it did in January. Repeated attacks deep inside Russia have forced its military to spread its air defences over a wider area.

Russia's Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that it had shot down 598 Ukrainian drones over 19 Russian regions, as well as over the Black and Azov Seas and the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea. In a separate attack, two people, including a nine-year-old child, were wounded when a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the town of Shatura in the Moscow region, local official Andrey Vorobyov said.

In Ukraine, Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, said drones struck the apartment block in the town of Marhanets. Russia's Ministry of Defence also said it had targeted warehouses and infrastructure at the Ukrainian ports of Odesa, Izmail and Yuzhnyi. Ukraine's Air Force said Russia launched 152 drones over the country on Saturday, of which 124 were destroyed, as both sides reported new strikes and casualties.

With PTI Inputs

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