Ukraine Strikes Russian Aviation Plants

Ukraine has once again brought the war to the heart of the Russian military apparatus with a series of attacks on strategic facilities linked to Moscow's aviation, signaling that Kyiv seeks to degrade not only the aggressor's offensive capability but also its aircraft maintenance, production, and modernization structure. The final damage assessment was still ongoing. Beyond the technical details, the political-military message is clear: Ukraine insists on a strategy of deep attrition against Russia's critical infrastructure, targeting centers that sustain the air war of an invading power that, from the start of the aggression, has unleashed missiles, drones, and bombings on Ukrainian cities, civilians, and energy system. In a long war, the combination of Ukrainian resistance and European political fatigue could be as decisive as any attack on a runway or hangar. On one hand, Ukraine demonstrated it retains the ability to strike valuable Russian military assets far from the front line. Reports on the exact extent of the strike were still partial, and, as is common in such incidents, immediate data was muddled by the propaganda war and the difficulty of independent verification. While the military front continues to escalate, the European political and financial front showed strong tensions again. A day later, the target was the plant in Staraya Russa, where, according to Kyiv, a hangar and an L-410 aircraft were hit. There, the Moscow-imposed governor, Mikhail Razvozhaev, reported a drone attack on the city on Thursday. However, restoration would not be immediate and would take weeks, a timeline that leaves the political showdown with Orbán open, as he further hardened his position during his country's election campaign. Thus, the day left a dual image of this war. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Aviastar plant in the Ulyanovsk region and the 123rd aircraft repair plant in Staraya Russa in the Novgorod region were hit—two sensitive targets for Russian air logistics. According to the version disseminated by Ukrainian forces, the attack on Aviastar took place on March 16 and affected hangars and parking areas, damaging aircraft on the premises. Meanwhile, Europe again showed that its support for Kyiv depends not only on the strategic will to contain Moscow but also on its own internal fractures. That factory is part of the United Aircraft Corporation of Russia and produces, among other things, military transport Il-76MD-90A and tanker Il-78M-90A aircraft, in addition to performing maintenance on heavy aircraft. In this context, these attacks appear as defensive-in-depth actions aimed at reducing the aggressor's material capabilities and increasing the internal cost of the Kremlin's campaign. In parallel, a new Ukrainian offensive on Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea was also reported. In Brussels, European Union leaders discussed a 90 billion euro aid package for Ukraine on Thursday, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán maintained his blockade, conditioning his approval on the reactivation of the Druzhba pipeline, damaged since January. Volodymyr Zelensky warned Europeans that the situation is very difficult and stressed the urgency of unblocking these funds, which are essential to sustain both Ukraine's defense and basic state functions. The core of the conflict with Hungary, and to a lesser extent with Slovakia, revolves around the interruption of the flow of Russian oil through Druzhba. Reuters reported that EU experts have already arrived in Ukraine to assess the system's condition and help with its reconstruction, while Kyiv accepted European technical and financial support to restore transit.