Ukraine staged a major drone attack on the Russian city of Kazan, 1,000km (620 miles) from the frontline, on Saturday, damaging residential buildings and temporarily shutting down the airport. A drone smashed into a high-rise apartment block and damaged a skyscraper in the city of more than 1.3 million but there were no casualties, local officials said. Videos posted on Russian social media networks showed drones hitting a high-rise building and setting off fireballs. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said two drones hit a 37-storey apartment block and that Ukraine had been targeting an unspecified industrial facility but that it suffered no damage.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday without specifically mentioning the strike on Kazan: “We will definitely continue to strike at Russian military targets with drones and missiles.” Some Kazan residents were evacuated – Russian authorities did not provide figures – and all major public events in the area were cancelled as a precaution after the strikes. Russian civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia temporarily closed Kazan international airport, one of the country’s busiest, but reopened it later on Saturday. Alongside the drones that hit the apartment block, three drones were shot down and three were suppressed by air defence systems, the foreign ministry said. The attack on Kazan – about 800km east of Moscow – came a day after Russian strikes on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, killed one person and wounded 13, and after five were killed by a Ukrainian attack on the Russian border region of Kursk.
Zelenskyy said on Saturday that he had met CIA director William Burns in Ukraine – a rare public disclosure of a meeting between the pair. The Ukrainian president said he had met Burns on multiple occasions throughout the war but their meetings had been undisclosed. “Bill Burns paid his last visit to Ukraine as CIA director,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram, posting a photo of him shaking hands with Burns in front of a state crest of Ukraine. “He and I have had many meetings during this war, and I am grateful for his help. Usually, such meetings are not publicly reported, and all our meetings – in Ukraine, in other European countries, in America, and in other parts of the world – were held without official information.” Burns is set to leave the CIA post as US president-elect Donald Trump brings in his own candidate.
Russia’s defence ministry said the army captured a new village on Saturday near the key city of Kurakhove in eastern Ukraine, where Russian forces have made major advances in recent months. The village of Kostiantynopolske is about 10km south-west of Kurakhove, an industrial town that is a looming Russian target.
The Russian embassy in London on Saturday described the UK’s planned transfer to Ukraine of more than £2bn ($2.5bn) backed by frozen Russian assets as a “fraudulent scheme”. Britain said in October it would lend Ukraine £2.26bn pounds as part of a much larger loan from the Group of Seven nations backed by frozen Russian central bank assets to help buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure. UK defence minister John Healey said the money would be solely for Ukraine’s military and could be used to help develop drones capable of travelling further than some long-range missiles.
