Ukraine said on Oct. 20 that it attacked Russia’s “largest explosives plant” and an airfield overnight, the latest in a series of long-range drone attacks in the rear to slowly grind down the bigger foe’s powerful war machine from afar.
A source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) told the Kyiv Independent that the drones targeted the large state-owned Sverdlov Plant in the city of Dzerzhinsk in the Nizhny Novgorod region, some 900 kilometers deep into Russia.
The plant has been under sanctions by the U.S. and the EU since 2023, over what the U.S. State Department says is its work “acquiring goods in support of Russia’s war effort.” The factory produces explosives, industrial chemicals, detonators and ammunition, the U.S. said in a press release when the sanctions were announced.
The source told the Kyiv Independent that the plant produces aviation and artillery shells, aviation bombs, and warheads that help Russia continue waging its war against Ukraine.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported later in the day that Ukraine had also struck the Lipetsk-2 airfield in the Lipetsk region, located over 400 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. This attack targeted ammunition depots, fuel storage facilities and aircraft on an airfield known to be home to Russian Su-34, Su-35 and MiG-31 aircraft, it added.
The operations were carried out in cooperation between the SBU, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR), and the Special Operations Forces, the SBU source said.
The Kyiv Independent could not independently verify the report.
Outmanned and outgunned on the battlefield Ukraine has turned to homemade drones to try to exhaust Russian combat capabilities as much as possible from afar, targeting Russian military-industrial complex facilities, airbases or oil refineries.
While Ukraine regularly claims attacks deep into Russia, it is difficult to verify the authenticity of the reports and the scale of the damage inflicted.
“The SBU worked on strengthening the sanctions against the Sverdlov plant,” the SBU source told the Kyiv Independent.
“We added drones to the economic sanctions, which give an instant effect. Work on reducing the enemy’s military capabilities will continue.”
Earlier in October, another Ukrainian drone strike set ablaze a Russian weapons depot storing North Korean ammunition in Bryansk Oblast, Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Oct. 9.
In September, Estonian Colonel Ants Kiviselg, head of the Estonian Defense Forces Intelligence Center, said Ukraine’s drone strike on the arms depot in Russia’s Tver Oblast destroyed two to three months’ worth of munitions.
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