Russia claimed to have struck Ukrainian air bases in a missile and drone attack ahead of the arrival of F-16 fighter jets from Kyiv’s western allies and said it had sent thousands of migrants to the war zone to dig trenches for its invasion force.
Ukraine’s military said it shot down all 23 attack drones and five of six missiles fired by Russia in the early hours of Thursday. One advanced Kinzhal missile was not intercepted, but officials did not say where it landed or what damage it caused.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces “delivered a combined strike using seaborne long-range precision weapons, Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles against Ukrainian airbase infrastructure.”
Moscow claimed the bases were “earmarked for the deployment of planes from western countries” and said that “all the designated targets were hit”.
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Ukraine has been pressing western states to provide it with US-made F-16 fighters for two years and hopes to receive the first planes this summer. The project poses major logistical challenges to Kyiv and its allies, spanning everything from training pilots and ground crew to adapting airfields and providing enough air defence systems to shield the bases from Russian attack.
Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium have pledged a total of more than 70 F-16s to Ukraine, under a US-backed programme that Moscow says will deepen western involvement in the war and increase the danger of a direct Nato-Russia clash.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was considering various responses to the collapse of ties with the West, including lowering the status of diplomatic relations.
“This is standard diplomatic practice for a state facing unfriendly and even hostile displays. As countries of the collective West and the United States become more involved in the Ukrainian conflict, Russia, of course, cannot help but consider various options for responding to such hostile interference,” he said. “But no decisions have been made on this yet.”
Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed and injured since their country launched a full invasion of its pro-western neighbour in February 2022, on the pretext that Nato states planned to use Ukraine to destabilise or attack Russia.
Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s powerful investigative committee, said on Thursday that thousands of male migrants were being sent to the war zone after receiving Russian citizenship that obliges them to register for possible conscription.
“We have already caught more than 30,000 who received citizenship and do not want to register with the military … and already sent about 10,000 to the special military operation zone,” he said, using Russia’s official term for its invasion of Ukraine.
He said they were being used “to dig trenches and create fortifications. This requires a really good workforce. Today they are boosting the ranks of our rear units”.
Mr Peskov said he had no information about a report in South Korean media, citing an unnamed government official in the country, that North Korea planned to send a military engineering unit to support Russia in occupied eastern Ukraine.
Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder said it was “something to keep an eye on”.
“I think that if I were North Korean military personnel management, I would be questioning my choices on sending my forces to be cannon fodder in an illegal war against Ukraine,” he added.
The leaders of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have asked the European Union to build “a defence infrastructure system” along their borders with Russia and Belarus to “address the dire and urgent need to secure the EU from military and hybrid threats”.
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