Ukraine appears to show ability to strike far inside Russia

A third Russian airfield was set ablaze by a drone strike, a day after Ukraine demonstrated an apparent new ability to penetrate hundreds of kilometres into Russia with attacks on two air bases.

Officials in the Russian city of Kursk, about 90 km (60 miles) north of the Ukraine border, released pictures of black smoke above an airfield after the latest strike on Tuesday. The governor said an oil storage tank had gone up in flames but there were no casualties.

On Monday, Russia said it had been hit hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine by what it said were Soviet-era drones - at Engels air base, home to Russia's strategic bomber fleet, and in Ryazan, a few hours' drive from Moscow.

Ukraine did not directly claim responsibility for the strikes but nonetheless celebrated them.

Late on Tuesday, sirens sounded on the territory of the airfield in Engels, Russian state-run news agencies reported, citing Yevgeny Shpolsky, first deputy of the Engels district administration.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated his country's determination to provide Ukraine with equipment it needs to defend itself while saying it had neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside Russia.

Russia's defence ministry said three service members were killed in the attack at Ryazan. Although the attacks struck military targets, it characterised them as terrorism and said the aim was to disable its long-range aircraft.

Ukraine never publicly acknowledges responsibility for attacks inside Russia. Asked about the strikes, Defence Minister Oleskiy Reznikov repeated a longstanding joke blaming carelessness with cigarettes. "Very often Russians smoke in places where it's forbidden to smoke," he said.

The damage to the warplanes also caused grumbling among Russian military bloggers, whose social media posts can provide a window into the mood in Russia on the course of the war.