Moscow accused Ukraine of attacking a lethal air base.
As Kyiv demanded for Russia to be expelled from the UN, Moscow said Monday that it had stopped a fresh Ukrainian drone strike on a key bomber military facility hundreds of kilometers from their shared border.
At Engels, a base for its strategic planes that Kiev claims has been used to attack Ukraine, Russia claimed to have shot down the drone. According to regional officials, falling debris claimed the lives of three personnel.
The same day, the Russian internal security service claimed to have murdered four accused “saboteurs” from Ukraine who were trying to enter the country via a border area.
Russian military installations and civilian infrastructure have allegedly been targeted by pro-Kyiv troops, who have also been accused of blowing up a bridge connecting seized Crimea to Russia.
A Ukrainian drone was shot down, according to the Russian defense ministry, at its Engels airport in the southern Saratov area, more than 600 kilometers (370 miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Since President Vladimir Putin committed soldiers to Ukraine on February 24, it was the deepest incursion into Russian territory and the second attack on the Engels airport in less than a month.
Early in December, the Russian defense ministry reported explosions at two airfields, including Engels, as a result of Ukrainian drone assaults, leaving three people dead. The drones were built in the Soviet Union, according to the ministry at the time.
Separately, the Russian FSB claimed to have killed a group of armed Ukrainian saboteurs who were attempting to enter the Bryansk area while carrying “improvised explosive devices.”
The FSB published a video that showed three bloodied victims lying on the ground while clutching rifles and wearing winter camouflage.
From Kiev, there was no quick response.
The assaults occurred ten months into Moscow’s incursion in Ukraine, where Russian forces have been pummeling the nation’s electricity system and leaving millions in the dark and freezing in the midst of winter.
Ukraine demanded on Monday that Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, be excluded from the international organization.
In a statement, the foreign ministry stated that Ukraine “calls on the member states of the UN… to deprive the Russian Federation of its position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and to expel it from the UN as a whole.”
