Dec. 21 (UPI) — Activity at three airports were restricted Saturday after six Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia in the city of Kazan, the Russian authorities said.
The assault came between 7:40 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. local time, and targeted “civilian infrastructure facilities” in Kazan with eight aircraft-type UAVs coming in three waves from different directions, the Russian Defense Ministry said on its Telegram channel.
Russian air defense systems shot down three drones and “electronic warfare forces” suppressed three others, officials claimed.
Local officials told state-run Russian media that no fatalities or injuries were reported in the attacks, which ignited fires at several residential buildings in the city of 1.3 million about 500 miles east of Moscow.
Airports in Kazan, as well as in the cities of Izhevsk and Saratov, were temporarily “restricted” in the wake of the attacks, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Local emergency services were working on the ground, providing assistance affected residents, with accommodations and food available. Kazan city officials said “selective evacuations” were being carried out in schools where necessary.
Only three of the attacking drones targeted defense industry facilities while the others had civilian targets, Tatarstan head Rustam Minnikhanov told the state-run TASS news agency.
“We are outraged by the massive drone attack,” he said. “We understand that there are issues with defense enterprises, but we never thought or expected that our enemy would attack residential buildings,” adding, “By chance or by our luck, there are no casualties or fatalities.”
A Ukrainian official said the military target in Kazan may have been a key gunpowder plant.
Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation within Ukraine‘s National Security and Defense Council, wrote in a Telegram post that the Kazan Powder Plant “is one of the ‘backbones’ of the Russian military-industrial complex, without which the mass production of ammunition would be impossible.”
Kovalenko said it supplies materials necessary for the production of Russian missiles, including Kalibr, Iskander and others.