(KYIV) – Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign is inflicting catastrophic and irreversible damage on Russia’s strategic military assets, with a recent strike on the Engels-2 airbase crippling a key Tu-95MS strategic bomber. New OSINT satellite imagery confirms that a Ukrainian strike on 28th August hit a Russian Tu-95MS strategic bomber at the Engels-2 air base, located about 650 kilometres north-east of Ukraine’s border.
The image shows severe damage directly to the aircraft’s right wing, rendering it completely beyond repair. Long-range attack drones operated by the SBU Elite Alpha unit flew 400 miles into Russian airspace and struck the Tu-95MS right on the tarmac. This follows another strike on 16th July that completely tore off the tail section of a second Tu-95 at Engels. It builds on the legacy of Operation Spider’s Web, a covert campaign where FPV drones were smuggled thousands of miles into Russia inside wooden sheds mounted on trucks, wiping out a third of Moscow’s strategic missile carriers in a single day.
Russia has no solution to this because it cannot build new Tu-95s. The aircraft first flew in 1952 and entered Soviet service several years later. The missile-carrying variant entered service in the 1980s and remains a core component of Russia’s long-range aviation force. The Tu-95 is often compared with the US Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress, both being Cold War-era strategic bombers that have remained operational for decades through repeated modernisation programmes.
Although the two aircraft use substantially different propulsion and design concepts, these Soviet-era airframes and their production lines were permanently shut down decades ago. Russia lacks the factory tooling, the parts, and the technical capability to manufacture replacements. Every time an SBU drone snaps a wing or destroys a fuselage, Russia’s nuclear-capable bomber fleet shrinks permanently.
Estimates place the baseline cost of a Tu-95MS strategic bomber at approximately $60 million (around £47 million), whilst deep modernisation and overhaul projects cost the Russian state upwards of $50 million (around £39 million) per airframe alone. Because the Tu-95 is out of production and cannot be manufactured from scratch, these airframes carry an irreplaceable strategic value.
Defence analysts estimate that replacing the capability provided by a single destroyed Tu-95, often requiring Moscow to rely on modern Tu-160 Blackjacks or heavy long-range modifications, effectively costs the Russian military upwards of $100 million to $160 million (around £78 million to £125 million) per lost platform in real terms. If the newly struck Engels aircraft is ultimately written off, the reported number of Tu-95s destroyed or damaged by Ukrainian attacks would rise to 12. That is over a billion dollars (around £780 million) of irreplaceable military hardware lost. Relatively low-cost attack drones inflicting this much damage is another sign of Ukraine mastering the asymmetric war that can tip the balance.
The war has also hit Engels in an even more personal way. Major General Nikolai Vorpachevsky, commander of Russia’s 22nd Heavy Bomber Aviation Division at Engels, was shot in a suspected Ukrainian assassination attempt. An unknown assassin on a motorcycle ambushed the general near his home, shooting him in the face and abdomen. Vorpachevsky, charged by Ukraine for ordering the devastating July 2024 missile strike on Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital, is in a critical condition and being airlifted to Moscow. Once again, the Ukrainians are showing that senior Russian officers are not safe in their own homes or offices, no matter how far away they are from the front line.
Ukrainian forces have effectively cut off around 2,500 Russian troops on the Kinburn Spit, a narrow piece of land sitting between the Black Sea and the Dnipro Estuary. Moscow captured this strategic strip of land back in June 2022. The peninsula used to be a primary firing platform for Russian artillery shelling Ochakiv and the Mykolaiv coast, but systematic Ukrainian strikes have wiped out those guns. Through a relentless campaign of drone strikes and remote mining, Ukraine has severed Moscow’s supply lines running from the Zaliznyi Port.
Ammunition, fuel, and food are running out, forcing Russian units to abandon forward positions and pull back past the village of Heriske. As Russia retreats eastward, the Russian force is vulnerable, and the unrelenting strikes on Crimea have stretched resources to breaking point. Moscow can now only reach these coastal routes through long-range artillery positioned deep inside the occupied Kherson region.
To make matters worse for the Kremlin, Ukrainian units are remotely dropping mines onto the roads targeting Russian quad bikes, motorcycles, and supply trucks. Intercepted communications show Russian soldiers screaming at their commanders, refusing to carry out supply runs because going onto the spit means certain death.
As one Ukrainian reconnaissance commander put it, the spit has become a trap for them. Eliminating Moscow’s forward firing capability has triggered widespread refusal amongst Russian troops to conduct rotations. Russian forces are caught between the sea and Ukrainian firepower with no clear way out.
Significant developments are also underway to the north of Lyman in the Donetsk oblast, where a second major Russian force is facing complete isolation. Ukraine’s General Staff is fundamentally reshaping how it defends the Donbas under the new chief of the General Staff, Andriy Hnatov. The eastern front has been split into two dedicated operational zones and handed to two of Ukraine’s most aggressive commanders. On the northern flank, Andriy Biletsky’s Third Army Corps is holding the line between Borova and Lyman. With new brigades brought under Biletsky’s wing, the responsibility now stretches directly to protect Sloviansk. Further south, where Russian pressure is fiercest, Denys Prokopenko’s First Azov Corps takes charge of the central sector from Toretsk to Druzhkivka. Prokopenko will manage both the 11th and 19th Corps to anchor the defence of Kramatorsk.
Be First to Comment