MOSCOW: Kyiv on Saturday staged a major drone attack on the Russian city of Kazan, 1,000 kilometres from the frontier, the latest in a series of escalating aerial attacks in the nearly three-year conflict.

A drone smashed into a high-rise apartment building in Kazan, a city of more than 1.3 million, damaging a skyscraper but leaving no victims, local officials said.

Though attacks so far into Russian territory are rare, Kazan and the surrounding oil-rich region of Tatarstan have previously been targeted by Ukrainian drones.

Such strikes are seen as embarrassing for Russia, almost three years into its military offensive on Ukraine.

“Today Kazan suffered a massive drone attack,” Rustam Minnikhanov, the head of Tatarstan, said in a post on Telegram. “While before industrial enterprises were attacked, now the enemy attacks civilians in the morning,” he added.

Videos on Russian social media networks showed drones hitting high rise buildings and setting off fireballs. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said two drones hit a 37-storey apartment block.

She said Ukraine had been targeting an unspecified industrial facility, but that it suffered no damage.

Ukraine, which has staged regular attacks on targets inside Russia since the start of the full scale military offensive in February 2022, did not immediately comment.

Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia temporarily closed Kazan international airport, one of the country’s busiest.

Some residents were evacuated, but authorities did not provide figures, and all major public events in the area were cancelled as a precaution.

Alongside the two drones that hit the apartment block, three drones were shot down and three were suppressed by air defence systems, Zakharova said.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2024