Neptune Missile Strike: Two Su-34s Claimed at Marinovka

The Ukrainian Navy has claimed the destruction of two Su-34 fighter-bombers at Marinovka air base in Russia’s Volgograd region with the Neptune missile system on October 29, the second time this month that the service has reported destroying Su-34s on the ground deep inside Russia. The Navy stated that the aircraft belonged to the 11th Mixed Aviation Regiment near the settlement of Oktyabrsky, roughly 400 kilometres from Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in his evening address: “We carried out two missile strikes, destroying two Russian Su-34s, and also hitting an Iskander launcher.” Russian officials have not acknowledged any damage, and no independent imagery of the wrecked aircraft had appeared by October 30. The strike reflects a sustained Ukrainian effort to thin out the fleet that delivers Russia’s glide bombs, with a missile designed to sink warships increasingly the weapon of choice.

The claim follows a Neptune strike on Borisoglebsk airfield in the Voronezh region on the night of October 14, after which the Navy reported six Su-34M bombers hit and Zelensky stated that four had been destroyed, as well as an attack on Khanskaya air base in Adygea on October 4 in which the Security Service of Ukraine claimed a Su-35 and a Su-34. Marinovka itself is far from a new target, having been struck by long-range drones in August 2024 and again on June 27, 2025, when the Security Service claimed two Su-34s destroyed and two damaged and British defence intelligence assessed that at least two had almost certainly been destroyed. The October 29 strikes came on the same day that Russia claimed to have downed a record 1,214 Ukrainian drones overnight, highlighting how far the Ukraine War has shifted towards long-range attacks on each side’s rear.

The Neptune was developed as a ground-launched anti-ship cruise missile and gained prominence in April 2022 when it was used to sink the Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva, with later variants adapted for land attack and the lengthened Long Neptune reported to reach around 1,000 kilometres. Its use against airfields places a significant share of Russia’s rear-area bases within reach of a weapon that Ukraine produces itself, and follows earlier Ukrainian missile strikes on Russian industry such as the attack on the Proton plant in Oryol that supplies Iskander-M components. Repeated strikes on the same handful of bases also highlight how slowly Russia has moved to shelter its bombers, with satellite imagery of the earlier strikes on Borisoglebsk and Marinovka showing aircraft hit on open parking areas more than three years into the war.

The Su-34 is a two-seat strike derivative of the Su-27 that formally entered service in 2014, and it has been the most intensively used Russian bomber of the war, carrying up to eight tonnes of munitions and serving as the main launch platform for UMPK glide kits that convert FAB series bombs into stand-off weapons. The type is built only at the Chkalov aircraft plant in Novosibirsk, which by Ukrainian estimates delivered around 18 airframes in 2025 and only four or five in 2026 up to mid-October, typically in batches of two or three. On those figures, the losses Ukraine has claimed in October alone exceed everything the plant is estimated to have delivered this year.