MOSCOW: A Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s central Tatarstan region — hundreds of miles from the countries’ shared border — injured over a dozen people, health officials said Tuesday.
Kyiv has regularly targeted Russian territory during Moscow’s Ukraine offensive but attacks this deep into the country are rare.
The strike hit a building in a business park in the town of Yelabuga and targeted an oil refinery in Nizhnekamsk, both nearly 1,100 kilometres from the border.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that the Kyiv regime continues its terrorist activity. The Russian military is working to minimise this threat and then completely eradicate it.
Ukraine was behind the strikes, AFP reported quoting two sources.
The region’s health ministry said that thirteen people were injured, including students and children in the strike on Yelabuga.
It said 8 were hospitalised in a mild to moderate condition and that their lives were out of danger.
Footages on social media showed an aircraft-style drone flying into a two-storey building at a business park near the city before exploding, sending a fireball into the air.
Ukraine did not say where the attack was launched from. If launched from Ukrainian territory, it would be one of the most far-reaching drone attacks carried out by Kyiv’s troops since the start of the fighting in February 2022.
Ukraine’s Enhanced Drone Capability
Kyiv has recently developed drones that can fly over 1,000 kilometres, Ukraine’s Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who is involved in the country’s drone programme, told Germany’s Welt newspaper in an interview published Monday.
