Tu-160
The Tupolev Tu-160 (NATO reporting name Blackjack) is a Soviet-era supersonic variable-sweep-wing strategic bomber and missile carrier designed by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the 1970s. It was built at the Kazan Aviation Plant and entered service with Soviet strategic aviation in the late 1980s. The aircraft is capable of carrying long-range cruise missiles, including nuclear-armed ones, and remains the largest and heaviest supersonic combat aircraft ever operated. After the dissolution of the USSR, most of the fleet based in Ukraine was transferred to Russia, where the type has been modernised as the Tu-160M and continues to serve with the Russian Aerospace Forces' long-range aviation.
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Russia launches massive combined missile and drone attack on Ukraine overnight on October 6–7, hitting Kyiv and multiple oblasts
Russia launched a large-scale combined missile and drone strike on Ukraine overnight on October 6–7, deploying ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles, and more than 130 strike drones. Main strike directions were Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. Ukrainian air defense said it shot down or suppressed 161 aerial targets by 09:00 on October 7. Multiple civilians were killed across several cities, including the destruction of a residential building in Pryluky, Chernihiv Oblast. President Zelensky, who had warned the previous day based on intelligence that Russia was preparing a massive strike, described it as one of the "most vile" and said energy infrastructure was a key target.
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Assassination attempt on Russian general in Engels days after Ukraine notified him of suspicion over Okhmatdyt strike
An unknown assailant on a motorcycle shot and critically wounded a Russian Aerospace Forces officer on the morning of 3 September in the settlement of Probuzhdeniye near Engels, Saratov Oblast. Russian media identified the victim as Major General Mykola Varpakhovych, commander of the 22nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Division. The attack came three days after Ukraine's SBU and the Office of the Prosecutor General notified Varpakhovych in absentia of suspicion in connection with the July 2024 missile strike on the Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv.