The airport of the Russian city of Kazan suspended flights to "ensure the safety of civilian aircraft flights," the press secretary of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency Artem Korenyako reported on its Telegram channel on Dec. 28.
Operations at the airport were suspended at 6 a.m. following a Ukrainian drone attack allegedly targeting the Russian regions of Voronezh, Rostov, and Belgorod, with Russian state media Tass reporting that 56 drones were shot down in total.
This information can't be independently verified. Ukraine hasn't commented on the attack.
"To ensure the safety of flights of civil aircraft, temporary restrictions on the operation of Kazan airport have been introduced," Korenyako said. Such restrictions were lifted a few hours later.
According to Korenyako, similar measures had been previously implemented and lifted on Dec. 27 in several Russian airports, including Kazan itself in Tatarstan region, Sochi in Krasnodar region, and Astrakhan in the namesake region.
These restrictions come in the wake of the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane on Dec. 25, which may have been allegedly shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile.
The plane, which was carrying passengers from Baku, Azerbaijan to Grozny in the Russian republic of Chechnya, crashed near the coastal city of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
Several media reports speculated that Russian air defenses struck the plane during air defense operations against a Ukrainian drone attack in Chechnya on the same morning of Dec. 25.
The same restriction were also implemented in the airports of Kazan and its neighboring city of Izhevsk after Ukrainian drones hit several buildings in the area on Dec. 21.
Kyiv has intensified its drone strike campaign on Russian territory, targeting military and industrial facilities to weaken Russia's war effort in Ukraine.
On Nov. 25, drones operated by Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) struck an oil depot in the western Russian city of Kaluga.
These attacks follow Ukraine's first use of U.S.-made ATACMS missiles against Russia and subsequent launches of UK-made Shadow missiles, made possible after Washington eased long-range attack restrictions.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
(Updated: )
