The probably successful attack mixed US, British and home-made weapons. Kyiv has said it would do it more often if allies sent Ukraine more missiles.

March 9, 2026, 5:31 pm

In a rare “shoot the archer, not the arrow” operation, Ukraine’s long-range missile and special operations forces attacked a Russian army site thought to contain deadly Shahed drones and their launch systems, a General Staff Statement said on Sunday.

The precision strikes using NATO weaponry concentrated on the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk in Russia-occupied territory. The first wave of attacks struck during the morning hours of Saturday with powerful explosions blowing out building interiors, setting fires and causing secondary explosions in industrial buildings adjacent to Donetsk airport, news reports and social media video geo-located to the impact locations showed.

The Ukrainian military statement said made-in-USA ATACMS ballistic missiles and the Britain-manufactured cruise missiles carried out the attacks. Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) drone video tracking the missiles’ terminal phase showed two heavy detonations and fires burning in service buildings by the airport, a site claimed by the AFU to have been in use by Russian forces for Shahed launches since 2024.

Ukrainian mainstream media, along with the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), on Saturday, confirmed the AFU claim that the NATO-standard weapons – both provided to Ukraine in limited and strictly-rationed quantities – had penetrated Russian air defenses to score effective hits. Video and reports from the scene did not show evidence of Russian defensive fire.

As Ukrainian forces hit the suspected Shahed launch and storage site overnight on March 6-7, Russian air defense forces detected and shot down 132 Ukrainian drones ranging over Russia’s Kazan, Samara, Volgograd, Kaluga, Penza, Saratov, and Ulyanovsk regions, among others, a Russian Ministry of Defense statement claimed. That official Kremlin source made no mention of the AFU attack on Donetsk.Donetsk social media on Saturday confirmed a second wave of heavy explosions in the vicinity of Donetsk’s Tochmash factory, west of the airport, during the morning hours after sunrise. The site, per news reports, had been used in the past by the Russian military for materiel storage and maintenance. Early images recorded in the city’s central and northern districts showed black smoke rising hundreds of meters into the sky from an industrial region. Eyewitnesses recorded hearing at least two powerful blasts. Reports conflicted on the weapons responsible for the strikes.

Donetsk officials said a major fire was in progress and emergency response teams were on the scene. No casualties were reported. Some media accounts said the Tochmash location had been used to store Shahed drones, but Kyiv Post was unable to confirm that independently.

On Sunday, a follow-up Ukrainian strike hit the premises of the Tochmash factory, followed by more secondary explosions. Most Donetsk social media reported a Shahed drone storage site had been hit, and dash-cam video passing by the factory showed a three-story industrial building with its center demolished, rubble, smashed façade and debris consistent with a powerful explosion.

The Ukrainian milblogger Supernova+, among others, reported a Ukrainian FP-9 Pelikan missile, a ballistic weapon developed in Ukraine by the company Fire Point, had caused the damage. The weapon is rated to carry a warhead containing up to 850 kilograms of high explosive. The Ukrainian milblogger Denis Kazansky, citing eyewitnesses, reported secondary explosions at the site. On Sunday evening, the geo-location research group CyberBoroshno confirmed Ukrainian forces had hit the Tochmash premises a second time.

Over the next night, March 7-8, per Russian Defense Ministry claims, at least 114 Ukrainian drones violated the Russian Federation’s airspace above the Donetsk, Crimea (NOTE: Crimea, like Donetsk, is Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory) Kaluga, Volgograd, and Krasnodar regions and that the Ukrainian aircraft observed were destroyed.

There was, again, no mention of the Ukrainian strike hitting Donetsk and the Tochmash premises or damage caused, as claimed by Ukrainians to one of Russia’s most-used Shahed drone launch and storage sites.

Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) on Sunday announced its operators had participated in the operation targeting Donetsk by attacking and destroying three Russian Pantsir-S1 anti-aircraft missile and gun systems covering routes attacking missiles used to approach Donetsk in that region and in the Russia-occupied region of Crimea.

Those attacks also hit a Russian navy port site in Crimea near the village of Ozerne, destroying an ocean-going armed patrol boat, and a storage and launch site at Crimea’s Kirovske airfield, used by Russian forces to operate Orion heavy strike drones. Four Orion control stations across the peninsula were hit and destroyed by those strikes as well, the SSO statement side. Video published by the SSO was consistent with those claims, but Kyiv Post could not independently confirm that the images were recorded by the SSO when claimed.

The Ukrainian attacks against claimed Shahed launch and storage sites in Donetsk, apparently using both American ATACMS and home-grown Pelikan FP-9 ballistic missiles, along with UK-manufactured cruise missiles, marked the first time the AFU claimed it had used British Storm Shadows and US-made ATACMS in a complex attack. Accompanied by 100+ drone raids both nights and preceded by attacks against Russian air defenses in the region, the March 6-8 attacks were among the most complex air raids conducted by Ukraine against Russia in months.

A flying wing kamikaze aircraft about the size of a big jet ski or a hang glider, the Russia/Iran-manufactured Shahed drone is well-known and widely disliked in Ukraine because of tens of thousands of attacks launched by Russia with the weapon since its first use in October 2022. Its warhead, carrying usually between 50-90 kilograms of high explosives, in Ukraine, has proved easily capable of demolishing an apartment or a store. In 2025, Russia launched between 50,000-55,000 Shahed-type drones at targets inside Ukraine, with a small number flying through Ukrainian airspace onwards to Poland, Belarus, Romania, and Moldova.

The AFU uses a complex mix of fighter aircraft, gun trucks, Cold War-era autocannon, jammers, anti-aircraft missiles, and above all, domestically developed interceptor drones to counter Russian Shahed swarms. Ukrainian air defenders consider the Shahed a relatively inaccurate weapon because of its relatively primitive navigation electronics. A successful intercept is most dependent on early detection and determination of the slow-flying drone’s real flight route, they say.

Sent into action from racks fitted to an easily concealable truck and flying to a manufacturer-claimed range of 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles), Shahed launchers and aircraft storage sites have proved difficult for Ukrainian forces to hit. Prior to Saturday, the most recent confirmed Ukrainian attack against a Shahed launch site took place on Nov. 28, 2025 with a combined Ukrainian commando-kamikaze drone raid hitting a Shahed launch site on Cape Chauda at the west-most end of the Crimea peninsula.

Per AFU statements, Russia also operates permanent Shahed launch and storage sites at the Primorsko-Akhtarsk Airfield in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region, the Vavlya district of Russia’s Bryansk region, the Shatalovo Airfield of Russia’s Smolensk region, the Millerovo military airfield in Russia’s Rostov region, and the most substantial site of all, the Tysmulova district of Russia’s Oryol region.

Ukraine has asked its Western allies for long-range strike weapons to hit the Shahed launch sites, but the main manufacturers – the US, Britain, France, and Germany – have been hesitant to turn over to Kyiv more than symbolic transfers. Concerns over possibly antagonizing Russia and limited stocks are the most common reasons given in Western capitals for not supplying Ukraine with those weapons in quantity.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/71552