The Russian military says the attacks will not go unanswered and launches more projectiles towards Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military has claimed its largest air attacks yet on Russian territory since the start of the war nearly three years ago as Donald Trump prepares to take the presidency in the United States.
The Russian Defence Ministry on Tuesday said it will retaliate for the large-scale missile and drone attacks overnight, and accused Ukraine of again using missiles supplied by the US and the United Kingdom.
The Russian military said most of the projectiles were shot down, with attacks targeting multiple cities and industrial sites.
The Russian cities of Saratov and Engels were reportedly hit, with some damage caused to factories in the area. Some schools were forced to switch to remote learning while several airports were forced to temporarily halt air traffic.
Ukrainian forces had attacked the same region last week as well, claiming to have struck an oil depot serving an airbase for Russian bomber planes. The attack caused a large fire that had only been put out a day before the latest strikes.
Ukraine’s military said Tuesday that it also hit points in Bryansk, Tula and Tatarstan, with a chemical factory that makes rocket fuel and ammunition for Russia’s army among the targets.
Ukraine first started using US-made ATACMS ballistic missiles and British Storm Shadow projectiles to strike targets inside Russia in late November last year.
Russia, which has said it wants talks but will not back away from its demands on Ukraine, has warned that the move could significantly increase tensions. Moscow also launched a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile known as Oreshnik at Ukraine that it said was ready to use again.
A day before the latest Ukrainian strikes on Russia, NATO chief Mark Rutte said Ukraine is currently not strong enough to “negotiate from a position of strength”, something the incoming US president said he wants to see.
Trump said that he would solve the war before taking office while he was campaigning for re-election. He has stopped saying that after his election, and his Ukraine envoy has discussed a 100-day timeframe, former US diplomat William Courtney said.
“I think any specific prediction is kind of risky because no one can fully know how these things will turn out, but President-elect Trump now seems to be more supportive of Ukraine than he was prior to the election,” the adjunct senior fellow at the Rand Corporation told Al Jazeera.
Courtney said that with its latest attacks on Russia, Ukraine may be trying to show Trump that “it has some fight left in it, that it can carry the fight to Russia and have serious military effect”.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to push deep inside eastern Ukraine while Kyiv persists with its military offensive inside the Russian territory of Kursk, where this week it captured the first North Korean soldiers fighting for Moscow alive.
