Downing of Azerbaijan plane reflects Ukraine war’s growing footprint– www.latimes.com
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Excerpt:
The deadly crash this week of an Azerbaijani passenger jet — with Russian air defenses as the suspected culprit — brings into focus a little-noticed aspect of the war in Ukraine: a battle zone that extends deep into Russia.
Ukraine for months has been using domestically tooled drones to strike Russian targets hundreds of miles from the front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine, often taking aim at fuel depots and military airfields.
The Kremlin tends to play down these attacks, and has a history of offering unconvincing explanations for massive explosions that sometimes result.
On Friday, Russian authorities acknowledged that Ukrainian drones were targeting Grozny, provincial capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, as an Azerbaijani commercial airliner with 67 people aboard was attempting to land there on Wednesday.
