Russia carried out massed missile strike on targets inside Ukraine in retaliation to last week's terrorism in Bryansk region, the Russian Ministry of Defense has announced.
"In response to the terrorism organized by the Kiev regime on March 2 in Bryansk region, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation delivered a massive retaliatory strike. High-precision long-range air, sea and land-based precision weapons, including the Kinzhal hypersonic missile system, hit key elements of Ukraine's military infrastructure, enterprises of the military-industrial complex, as well as energy facilities providing them with power," MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a briefing Thursday.
All of the designated targets were hit, the officer said, with the strikes said to have destroyed sites hosting Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, knocked out railway infrastructure involved in the transfer of foreign weapons, and disabled facilities involved in the production of ammunition and the repair of military equipment.
Two people were killed and a 10-year-old boy injured last week after saboteurs infiltrated the Russian-Ukrainian border and seemingly randomly opened fire on residents, vehicles and local infrastructure using small arms, drones, and other weapons. Russia's Federal Security Service announced Monday that the March 2 attacks were organized by militants from the 'Russian Volunteer Corps', a neo-Nazi militia fighting for Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Ministry warned last week that the use of NATO-provided weapons in the Bryansk attacks raised questions about the West's culpability for the acts of terrorism. Russian and American military and international affairs experts told Sputnik that the Bryansk attacks may have been designed to provoke Russia into launching a premature new offensive in Ukraine amid growing frustration about the situation on the front, and as a pretext for Kiev to demand more weapons from the West.
The Kinzhal (lit. 'Dagger') is a new Russian air-launched, nuclear-capable hypersonic missile with a range of over 2,000 km, designed to overcome any existing or prospective air defenses, and to launch attacks on foreign warships, including carriers. The missile has been used in Ukraine repeatedly over the past year. President Biden, Kiev's main sponsor in NATO's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, characterized the Kinzhal as a "consequential weapon" that's "almost impossible to stop."