Russia continues to suffer attacks on its infrastructure. The next point on the map of the Russian-Ukrainian war was the city of Borysoglebsk, where Ukrainian drones flew on the night of April 8-9. What strategically important facilities for the Russian occupation army are located in Borysoglebsk? read in today's News.LIVE article.
Attack on Borysoglebsk
The war is sure to spill over into the territory of the Russian Federation. Ukrainian drones regularly strike critical infrastructure facilities for the armed forces of the aggressor country. Last week News.LIVE wrote about important strikes on the Morozovsk airfield in the Rostov region.
But the Ukrainian attacks did not end there. On the night of April 8-9, unmanned aerial vehicles attacked the city of Borysoglebsk, which is in the Voronezh region. According to information received from various sources, one of the two main military facilities located in Borysoglebsk was damaged.
Initially, the independent Russian publication ASTRA reported that the Borysoglebsk Air Force Training Center named after Chkalov was hit. However, later it became known that Ukrainian drones attacked another military object – “711th Aircraft Repair Plant”. How important are these two facilities related to the military and space forces of the Russian Federation for the Russian army of occupation?
A training aviation center that trains occupiers
One of the key points in the training of military aviation is the training of the flight crew. As you know, the training of one pilot is much more expensive and longer than that of a military serviceman. In addition, the number of personnel in the military space forces of the Russian Federation is quite limited – therefore, there are very few military educational institutions specializing in pilots in the Russian Federation.
Actually, there are only two of them. These are the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots and the Voronezh Military Air Academy named after Zhukovsky and Gagarin. Since 1992, the training center in Borysoglebsk has become a branch of the academy itself, which is located in Voronezh.
Therefore, on the territory of the training aviation base in the city of Borysoglebsk, those pilots who conduct attacks on Ukrainian territory were most likely trained – both the theater of war and the peaceful towns and villages of our country. The loss of both personnel and places for training future pilots will definitely have a negative impact on the capabilities of Russian aviation – which lost about 130 pilots in the first year of the full-scale war. And to prepare a full-fledged replacement for them – this is a very difficult task, especially in the conditions of Ukrainian drone attacks.
Aircraft repair plant that restores old missiles
Another object, which, according to preliminary data, was damaged by a drone attack on the night of April 9, is even more important for Russian military aviation. Because if the educational center – this is work for the future, even if it is not far away, the “711th aircraft repair plant” was used by the Putin regime for its criminal purposes already here and now.
Actually, not much is known about this object, since it was a rather closed enterprise even before the full-scale war. And from 2021, when the Russian Federation was already actively preparing for a full-scale invasion, all documents, in particular, annual reports, were completely classified. However, some information about the work of the “711th aircraft repair plant” in Borysoglebsk was still found and made public.
According to pre-war data, which the Putin regime did not have time to hide, did repairs or restoration of various aviation equipment. First of all, we are interested in rockets. In Borysoglebsk, they worked, in particular, on air-to-ground cruise missiles – X-25 or X-58.
In addition, the plant affected by Ukrainian drones manufactured and modified guidance systems for such well-known Russian missiles in Ukraine as the X-22 and X-55, with which the occupiers have occasionally shelled peaceful Ukrainian cities during the two years of full-scale aggression.
So, probably, for a certain time, the aggressor country will have problems with the preparation of missile equipment used by the Russian strategic and tactical aviation. However, the main success of this attack is not in the immediate consequences, although they must also be taken into account.
The fact is that Borysoglebsk, first of all, is located at a distance of 300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Which confirms the ability of Ukrainian drones to fly to such a distance deep into Russian territory. And secondly – a successful attack on a strategically important object (especially if this object was the “711th aircraft repair plant”) demonstrated that the Russian air defense system cannot protect even such enterprises.
Such helplessness of Russian air defense means , that all or almost all of the air defense forces were transferred to the war in Ukraine. So the Russian Federation actually remains defenseless against a serious attack – for example, Western missile forces, if it comes to a direct confrontation between the Russian Federation and the NATO armies.