Night of hell of Putin as Ukraine ‘shoots down £300m spy plane’ & kamikaze drones blitz Russia’s biggest steel plant

VLADIMIR Putin endured a night from hell as Ukraine claimed to have shot down a nearly £300million spy plane.

Kamikaze drones are also reported to have blitzed Russia‘s biggest steel plant – which allegedly makes metal used by Vlad to build his missiles.

It comes as today marks the second anniversary of Putin’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Shocking footage showed the Russian A-50 ‘Mainstay’ plane being blasted from the sky in a fireball.

Russia originally claimed it was friendly fire, but Ukraine has since claimed they blasted the plane with a revamped S-200 Soviet-era missile.

The right wing was blown off the reconnaissance aircraft by the attack – sending it into a death spiral over the Sea of Azov.

Ten crew were reported to have been found dead at the crash site in Russia’s Krasnodar region.

It is the same region where the dictator’s official Black Sea residence and private £1 billion place are located.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian kamikaze drones are believed to have been responsible for three thunderous explosions and a massive fire at Russia’s largest steel producer NLMK in Lipetsk.

It is reported to be owned by billionaire oligarch Vladimir Lisin, 67, famous for buying a sprawling Scottish estate in Perthshire.

The steel firm has been accused of producing steel for Russian missiles, something NLMK denies.

The A-50U AWACS reconnaissance plane was shot down some 150 miles inside Russia from the frontline in a major success for Ukraine.

It has been the worst month of the war for Putin’s air force – with IP to eight military planes shot down.

In one video, an aircraft could be seen emitting light as it travelled through the sky before exploding in a fireball.

The same video then cut to a shot of flames roaring from the ground and plumes of dark smoke filling the air.

Another clip of the crash’s aftermath showed a bright orange blaze near the silhouette of a shed or house.

A witness said: “We heard two pops and a rumble. We ran out into the street.

“When it flew over us, it was no longer intact, without the right wing with a large roll. 

“The fuselage fell into the ground, and the left wing was knocked off by trees and landed in the courtyard of house 13 Polevaya Street.

“Two grannies live there, they were not injured.”

It was the second time a Russian A-50 was downed since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, with another A-50 shot down over the Sea of Azoz in January.

An IL-22M bomber, worth about £28million, was also hit but managed to make its way back to Anapa airport with several casualties.

The loss of the A-50U – the second in six weeks – will mean a severe blow to Putin’s aerial reconnaissance, harming Russia’s ability to pinpoint targets for missile strikes and monitor Ukrainian battlefield deployments.

According to British intelligence, the Mainstay is “a key enabler for Russian operations over Ukraine, providing airborne early warning of threats as well as command and control functionality”.