Russia Says Ukrainian Drones Attacked Buildings in Kazan City

A view shows a damaged multi-story residential building following an alleged Ukrainian drone attack, in Kazan, Russia, on Dec. 21, 2024. Reuters

Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that drones attacked residential buildings in the capital city of the Tatarstan Region to the east of Moscow on Saturday morning.

The Kazan City mayor’s office said the drones attacked buildings in three locations in Kazan, according to Russia’s TASS News Agency.

Eight drones were seen flying over Kazan on Dec. 21, six of which were thwarted by Russia’s air defenses, including one at an industrial facility, TASS reported. The other targets were described as residential buildings but no casualties have been reported.

First responders were working at the site of the attacks, TASS said.

Footage circulating on Telegram and Ukrainian media showed an aircraft flying into a glass-walled high-rise building, setting the building on fire.

“Today, Kazan suffered a massive drone attack,” head of the oil-rich Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, said in a Telegram post.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, blamed Ukraine for the attack in a statement on Dec. 21.

“Kiev is taking out its impotent anger for tangible military defeats on the peaceful population of Russia,” Zakharova said in comments carried by TASS.

“The attack on the capital of Tatarstan is also a kind of revenge for the successful BRICS summit in October 2024, which demonstrated the power and influence of this association, as well as an attempt to intimidate the population of one of the dynamically developing regions of our country.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on Saturday evening that Ukraine “will definitely continue to strike Russian military targets—with drones and missiles, increasingly with Ukrainian-made ones, specifically targeting military bases and Russian military infrastructure used in this terror against our people.”

He added that Ukrainians were working on Saturday to remove the debris and rubble following Russia’s Dec. 20 missile attack on Kyiv, which Russia said was in retaliation for a Dec. 18 Ukrainian attack on a chemical production site in its southern Rostov region by six missiles fired using the U.S.-made ATACMS and four UK-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles. Ukraine also hit Russia’s border region of Kursk with U.S.-supplied missiles, killing six, according to local Russian officials.

The Epoch Times has been unable to independently verify the Ukrainian or Russian claims.

Overnight, Ukraine attacked Russian facilities across four Russian regions and the Black Sea with 19 drones, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, adding that all of the attacks were thwarted.

“Air defense forces on duty destroyed 19 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, including nine over the Belgorod Region, five over the Voronezh Region, three over the Black Sea, one over the Kursk Region and one over the Krasnodar Region,” the ministry said in a statement, according to TASS.