Residents evacuated after Ukrainian drone strike causes major fire at Russian air base

A massive overnight Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian Air Force base in the Saratov region city of Engels has caused a major fire to break out and prompted the authorities to evacuate local residents, Saratov Governor Roman Busargin said on Thursday.

The strike on the air base, which is home to the Russian Air Force’s fleet of Tupolev Tu-160 and Tu-95MS strategic bombers, also caused damage to administrative and residential buildings in the city, injuring one person, Busargin added.

Telegram channel Engels Online said that falling wreckage from the drones had also caused a fire to break out at an oil depot in Engels, though this has not been confirmed by the authorities. A state of emergency has been declared in the city, district head Maxim Leonov said on Telegram.

Busargin said that drone wreckage had also damaged a private home in the city of Saratov, which lies across the Volga river from Engels, but no one was injured.

The authorities in Russia’s Saratov region, where the Defence Ministry said it had downed 54 drones, said this was the largest Ukrainian attack of the war so far.

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency reported that flights from the airports in Saratov and nearby Samara were briefly suspended on Thursday morning, but resumed shortly afterwards.

The attacks came as Russia and Ukraine exchanged drone strikes on Wednesday night, just hours after a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Zelensky agreed to a 30-day moratorium on energy infrastructure attacks.