Ukraine says destroyed army transport plane in Russia

KIEV

Kiev said on Oct. 14 its forces had destroyed a Russian military transport plane stationed at an airfield deep inside Russian territory over the weekend, the latest Ukrainian claim of an attack behind Moscow's lines.

Ukraine has stepped up attacks inside Russian territory in recent months, targeting military sites and energy facilities, aiming to upend Russian military logistics.

Kiev's military intelligence agency said it had destroyed the Tu-134 transport aircraft overnight between Oct. 12 and Oct. 13 at a military airfield in the Orenburg region, which lies around 1,000 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.

"These Soviet-built airplanes are used mainly to transport leadership of the Russian Defense Ministry," the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said on social media.

The agency posted footage of what Ukraine said was an arson attack, showing a blaze burning inside an aircraft, but it did not provide details of how the alleged attack was carried out.

There was no immediate comment on the specific claims from Moscow.

Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has detained hundreds of people for alleged sabotage and arson attacks on military, railway and other infrastructure sites.

Meanwhile, Russian forces have re-captured a tiny village in southern Ukraine that Kiev managed to take back during its summer counteroffensive last year, the Russian Defense Ministry said yesterday.

Levadne, in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, was home to just a handful of people before Moscow's full-scale military assault began in February 2022 and lies on the southern front line.

It was one of seven villages the Ukrainian army managed to wrest from Moscow in the area last June during a mostly failed counteroffensive, and sits just southwest of the Ukrainian-held stronghold of Velyka Novosilka.