Ukraine just killed bomber inside Russia. Soviet Union stopped building them decades ago — so this one is gone for good

Ukraine says it destroyed one of the Russian bombers that hits its cities. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said its long-range drones flew about 800 kilometers to the Engels military airfield in Russia’s Saratov Oblast and struck a Tu-95 strategic bomber, tearing off its tail section entirely.

The claim is the confirmation Ukraine had not yet made this morning. EP reported earlier on 16 July that open-source analysts had identified a fire at Engels-2 following an overnight drone strike, with no confirmed aircraft loss. The SBU has now claimed a specific result: a Tu-95 with its tail section destroyed.

The damage is described as critical, and the account is the SBU’s own and has not yet been independently verified by imagery.

The SBU said the operation carried out tasks set by the president to reduce the military-economic potential of the aggressor state, and framed each destroyed bomber as dozens of missiles never fired at Ukrainian cities.

Engels is base Ukraine keeps coming back to

Engels-2 is one of Russia’s principal strategic aviation bases, home to the Tu-95MS and Tu-160 bombers Russia uses to fire Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities, roughly once or twice a month in salvos of dozens of missiles. Russia had around 60 Tu-95 aircraft as of 2023, a Soviet-era fleet it can no longer build, which is what makes each loss matter.

Ukraine has struck Engels since December 2022, mostly hitting fuel depots and munitions storage. A March 2025 SBU drone strike destroyed nearly 100 air-launched cruise missiles at the base. An April 2025 strike on Engels destroyed one Tu-95MS and damaged two others. If today’s claim holds, it is another confirmed bomber loss at a base Russia has repeatedly expanded and failed to protect.

Bomber-hunting campaign has bigger precedent

Ukraine’s most spectacular strike on Russian strategic aviation was Operation Pavutynnia (“Spiderweb”) on 1 June 2025, when SBU drones smuggled deep inside Russia struck bombers at airbases as far as Irkutsk in Siberia. Ukraine said that the operation hit over 40 Russian aircraft.

The Soviet Union built Russia’s strategic bombers, and they are effectively out of production, meaning that a Tu-95 lost is a Tu-95 gone for good.

“Russia’s strategic aviation can no longer feel safe even at its most remote military airfields,” the SBU said.

The 800-kilometer reach it claimed for this strike is the argument: there is no longer a Russian airbase far enough back to be out of range.