Image shows Tu-22 "Backfire" ablaze after attack at airbase south of St Petersburg.
EXCELLENT! 👍🏼 🇺🇦 The only way to end the war for good will be with Putin's defeat.
A flagship Russian long-range bomber has been destroyed in a Ukrainian drone strike, according to reports. Images posted on social media and analysed by BBC Verify show a Tupolev Tu-22 on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase, south of St Petersburg.
Ukraine had not been very active in that region. Soltsy is 124 miles/200 km south of Putin's hometown St. Petersburg.
The Kremlin is pretending that this is not a big deal.
Moscow said that a drone was hit by small-arms fire but managed to "damage" a plane. Ukraine has not commented. The Tu-22 can travel at twice the speed of sound and has been used extensively by Russia to attack cities in Ukraine. [ ... ] It stated the location as "a military airfield in the Novgorod region", where Soltsy-2 is situated. "The UAV was detected by the airfield's observation outpost and was hit with small-arms fire," the ministry said.
The point is to make the Kremlin feel insecure and cause the Russian military to divert resources to protecting locations which were previously thought to be immune to attack. Soltsy-2 is about 620 km from Ukraine.
The location of this attack is directly related to Russia's terrorist attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
The Tu-22 is a Cold War-era, swing-wing supersonic bomber, codenamed "Backfire" by Nato, which has been used extensively in attacks on Ukrainian cities. Modern versions such as the Tu-22M3 can reach speeds of Mach 2 (2,300km/h or 1,430mp/h) and can carry up to 24,000kg of weapons, including "dumb bombs" and homing missiles. They have been used in conflicts in Syria, Chechnya, and Georgia and most recently in Ukraine. According to prosecutors in Kyiv, 30 people were killed when a Tu-22-launched missile hit a block of flats in Dnipro in January.
There is now one fewer Tu-22 (possibly two according to other reports) which can bomb Ukrainian maternity hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, and blood transfusion centers.
Russia is losing the war – but not fast enough. Give Ukraine whatever military hardware and weapons it needs except nukes.
The bottom line is that Russia has no fucking business in Ukraine. That's all anybody needs to know about this conflict.