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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Ukrainian forces "destroyed or heavily damaged" one of Russia's prized but scarce A-50 spy planes, according to a Ukrainian official, after Kyiv targeted an aviation plant in southern Russia.
Russia's Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its air defenses had intercepted 47 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight, including 41 over the southwestern Rostov region.
Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region, said Kyiv launched a "massive UAV (uncrewed aerial vehicle) attack" on the city of Taganrog, east of the captured Ukrainian city of Mariupol and west of Rostov-on-Don.
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Russian military bloggers reported that Ukrainian drones struck a plant in the city that repaired A-50 spy planes, as well as a nearby airfield. The attack came in "several waves," influential channel Fighterbomber wrote on Saturday.
A-50s are airborne warning and control (AWACS) aircraft with powerful radars, and each comes with a price tag of hundreds of millions of dollars. Also known by their NATO moniker, Mainstay, A-50s help Russia seek out Ukrainian air defenses and coordinate attacks to be carried out by other aircraft, such as fourth-generation jets.
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Serhiy Bratchuk, a Ukrainian official in the south of the country, said drones had struck the plant's workshop and sparked a fire, but that it was unclear if an A-50 aircraft located nearby was hit.
"This is an incredibly successful operation using kamikaze drones in the rear of the Russian Federation," Bratchuk said.
The Taganrog plant was "heavily damaged," and the A-50 aircraft close to the facility was either destroyed or sustained significant damage, Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko told Newsweek on Sunday.
The A-50s are the "brains and eyes" of Russia's air force, he said, adding it was a "vital" Russian asset, particularly as Ukraine will receive Western-donated F-16 fighter jets later this year.
In late January, analysts suggested to Newsweek that Russia had adopted riskier tactics with its A-50 aircraft ahead of Ukrainian pilots using F-16s against Moscow's jets.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
Kyiv said it has taken out two of Russia's A-50 aircraft since the new year. In late February, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine's military intelligence agency, the GUR, said Moscow still had six A-50s remaining.
"That's two full shifts. Another A-50 will 'fall' and round-the-clock duty will have to be stopped," the GUR chief added.
Earlier this month, the British government suggested that Russia had likely grounded its A-50 fleet for operations around Ukraine. Moscow may attempt to revive mothballed A-50s, the U.K. Defense Ministry said.
Ukraine's military said late last month that Moscow is "trying to replace" its A-50s with reconnaissance drones.
"No drone can individually provide the same capability as an AWACS, "but a combination of different drones with varying ranges and altitudes can fill in some of the gaps left open by the loss of [an] A-50," Samuel Bendett, of the U.S. think tank, the Center for Naval Analyses, told Newsweek at the time.
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