Putin vows retaliation for Ukrainian drone strike

The organizers of the strike on Kazan will “regret” what they did, the Russian president has said

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.

Putin assured Tatarstan’s leader, Rustam Minnikhanov, that the republic would recover from the attack on its capital, Kazan.

“I am confident 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.

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Ukrainian drones strike residential buildings deep inside Russia – officials (VIDEO)

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev had deployed three waves of fixed-wing drones, targeting Kazan’s civilian infrastructure. 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 escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, drones from Kiev have been intercepted multiple times over Moscow and other regions of the country. Only a few have successfully hit their targets.

The majority of these incidents have occurred in areas relatively close to the border between the two nations. In contrast, Kazan is located 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.