Ukraine hits 2 more Russian munition depots, seeking to disrupt war effort

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine said Saturday that it had struck two large ammunition depots deep inside Russia overnight. It was the second such attack in less than a week as Kyiv seeks to escalate hits on Russian military bases and warehouses to try to disrupt Moscow’s military logistics and slow its troops’ advance on the battlefield.

The strikes announced Saturday targeted ammunition depots near the towns of Toropets, in northwestern Russia, and Tikhoretsk, in the country’s southwest. The facilities are both more than 200 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory, and one has been identified as a major storage facility for munitions Russia has acquired from North Korea.

Ukraine said its armed forces had struck the depot near Toropets with drones, but it stopped short of specifying the types of weapons used in the attack on Tikhoretsk, saying only that the arsenals had been “hit by fire,” raising the possibility that it had used a new kind of weapon.

The attack came as Ukraine has been pressing its allies for weeks to let it use powerful, Western-delivered missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. That authorization has yet to be granted, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and in the meantime his country has sought to modify missiles and drones already in its arsenal for long-range use.

Russia has not directly acknowledged the strikes on the depots, but regional authorities said that a drone attack on Tikhoretsk had “caused a fire that spread to explosive objects” and triggered detonations. Some 1,200 residents were evacuated from the area. Russian state news agency Tass reported that a drone attack near Toropets had forced the evacuation of a train station and the suspension of traffic on a highway.

Strikes on weapons arsenals are crucial for Ukraine to weaken Russia’s overwhelming fire superiority on the battlefield, military experts have said. Ukrainian soldiers have long been outgunned at the front, with Zelenskyy saying in April that Russia fires 10 shells for every Ukrainian one.

Serhii Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a nongovernmental research group, said, “The only way to defeat the Russian army is to defeat its logistics,” most specifically by destroying its ammunition depots.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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