On the morning of Friday, November 17, the Russian Smolensk was attacked by unmanned aerial vehicles.
Local residents wrote on social media about the sounds of explosions in the area of the city’s aviation plant.
Eyewitnesses reported that fire trucks drove toward the enterprise.
The fact that the Russian city was attacked by drones was confirmed by the Smolensk oblast Governor, Vasily Anokhin. In his Telegram channel, in the traditional style of Russian propaganda, he stated that air defense and electronic warfare had allegedly destroyed “Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles.” According to him, this happened in the Zadneprovsky district of Smolensk and on the territory of the Smolensk district.
“According to preliminary data, no casualties were reported. Operational services are working at the scene,” the official of the aggressor country wrote.
However, later in the evening, Russian social media disclosed details of the attack on the Smolensk Aviation Plan.
The Russian Telegram channel Baza wrote that one of the drones tried to attack the Smolensk Aviation Plant.
According to Baza’s intelligence, the drone was supposedly suppressed by electronic warfare at 8:00 a.m. local time. As a result, it fell to the roof of one of the company’s workshops and exploded. This caused a fire.
The fire was extinguished after a while. The incident reportedly left a meter-long hole in the roof. No one was allegedly injured.
It is worth noting that this is not the first attack on the Aviation Plant in Smolensk. The previous attack was reported on October 1, 2023. Later, the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine revealed the target of the attack on the Smolensk Aviation Plant, which is part of the Russian JSC Tactical Missiles Corporation.
According to Ukrainian intelligence, the October strike halted the production of Kh-59 air-to-surface missiles in numerous versions.
“According to confirmed data, three of the four drones hit the target, causing significant damage to the production facilities of the military enterprise of Russia,” the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine stated.