Putin vows retaliation for Ukrainian drone strike
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the organizers of Saturday’s drone attack on the city of Kazan will face a harsh retaliatory response.
“Whoever and no matter how hard they try to destroy something [in Russia], they will face many times greater destruction in their own country for it and will also regret what they are trying to do in our country,” he said Sunday.
Addressing Tatarstan's leader, Rustam Minnikhanov, Putin expressed confidence that the republic will manage to recover from the attack on its capital, Kazan.
“I am certain that the regional authorities will restore everything that was damaged by our enemies and adversaries,” he said, speaking at a video conference on launching new transport infrastructure projects.
The December 21 attack on Kazan targeted residential buildings and a factory, causing damage but no casualties, according to local authorities. Officials reported eight drone strikes in total, including six on residential buildings, one on an industrial enterprise, and one which was intercepted over a river.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev had deployed three waves of fixed-wing drones. Russian air defenses shot down three of the incoming UAVs, and three more were downed with the help of electronic warfare systems, the military reported on Saturday.
Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, Kiev has repeatedly targeted Russian border regions such as Bryansk, Belgorod, and Kursk. Drone strikes have also reached Moscow on several occasions. Kazan, in comparison, lies much farther away, approximately 1,379 kilometers (857 miles) from Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that the “terrorist attack” was Kiev’s “revenge” for the BRICS summit which Kazan hosted in October and “demonstrated the power and influence of this association in the world.”
It was also “an attempt to intimidate the population of one of the dynamically developing regions of our country,” she said in a statement on Saturday.
