Ukrainian forces blasted a Russian command center in occupied Crimea, according to reports Saturday.
The Ukrainian Air Force said it hit and destroyed the Saki air field in western Crimea, the region illegally occupied by Russia in 2014.
“The Ukrainian Air Force is carrying out methodical work aimed at destroying the occupiers’ control system in Crimea,” said Ukraine government advisor Anton Gerashchenko in a post on X Saturday.
“Over the past few days, the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces has carried out a number of successful attacks on enemy targets in the still-occupied Crimea.”
The airbase is home to the 43rd Fighter Aviation Regiment of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which supports Russian troops in the region and is armed with Sukhoi Su-24 bombers.
Ukraine last hit the Saki airfield, which Gerashchenko said “hosts the Nitka training complex for training deck aviation flight crews,” in 2022, destroying several Russian aircraft.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its defenses intercepted 36 drones over Crimea on Friday and one over Krasnodar in southern Russia.
Meanwhile, a Russian missile strike killed at least 11 people in Pokrovsk, a city in the eastern Donetsk region, the governor of the Ukrainian-controlled part of the region said.
“Eleven dead, including five children — these are the consequences for now of strikes on Pokrovsk district,” Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram.
“The main blow was dealt to Pokrovsk and Rivne in the community of Myrnograd.”
Separately, Ukraine’s Kharkiv region prosecutor’s office shared new evidence on Saturday that Russia attacked Ukraine with missiles supplied by North Korea.
The office showed fragments of the missiles, backing up claims made Friday by a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky that Russia was using weapons supplied by the Hermit Kingdom.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said earlier this week that the U.S. believes the Kremlin has used North Korean missiles at least twice in recent weeks.
In Russia, the city of Belgorod, which has come under heavy fire in the last few weeks, cancelled midnight masses for Russian Orthodox Christmas, which begins Saturday night.
With Post wires
