The ministry said it bombed Odessa, where the Ukrainian navy is based, and Mykolaiv, near Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
“The armed forces of the Russian Federation carried out a massive retaliatory strike overnight using precision sea-based weapons against facilities where terrorist acts against the Russian Federation are being prepared using unmanned boats,” the ministry said in a statement.
It said it had bombed a ship repair factory near Odessa, where such boats were being built – believed to be naval drones of the type Russia believes were used to attack the Crimean bridge.
It added that “in addition, storage facilities containing about 70,000 tons of fuel used to supply equipment for the Ukrainian army” were destroyed near the cities of Mykolaiv and Odessa.
It said all targets were bombed and destroyed, citing fires and explosions as evidence.
Reuters could not independently confirm the account.
Ukrainian Air Force said earlier Six Kalibr cruise missiles and 31 out of 36 drones were shot down, most of them over the coastal regions of Odessa and Mykolaiv in the south.
Russian couple Killed, was killed Their 14-year-old daughter was injured on Monday in what Moscow said was a Ukrainian attack that destroyed part of the road from the bridge linking Russia to Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Kiev did not claim responsibility for the attack.
Ukrainian media said that the Ukrainian security services used naval drones to attack the bridge, which has recently returned to full operation after suffering severe damage in a similar attack last October.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that it was clear to Moscow from the start that Ukraine was behind the attack, prompting some Russian tourists to flee Crimea by driving through parts of southern Ukraine controlled by Russian forces.
Peskov asserted that the night strikes were in retaliation for the attack on the bridge.
Alexander Coats, a senior Russian war correspondent for Komsomolskaya Pravda, praised Moscow’s decision to bomb Ukrainian port infrastructure, but questioned why such strikes were not launched pre-emptively.
“Why was the shipyard near Odessa, where naval drones are manufactured, struck in retaliation rather than proactively? Was the intelligence received only after the strikes on the bridge?” Coates asked on social media.
He pointed out that Ukraine used naval drones more than once to try to attack the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, which is located in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, which raised more questions about the reason for the location of the drones. He was not targeted earlier.
“(f) Why were the oil storage facilities struck as retaliation rather than as part of a planned effort to destroy the enemy’s military infrastructure?” Coates asked. “It (Ukraine), for example, doesn’t need any excuse to do this systematically. It does it (hit Russian military infrastructure) without hesitation.”
By Andrew Osborne
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborne; Editing by Connor Humphreys and Mike Harrison)
