For the first time in the war launched by Moscow, Ukrainian drones flew around 1,200 kilometers [745 miles] to reach their target in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, local media reported on Tuesday.
A drone attack on Yelabuga and Nizhnekamsk in Tatarstan is reported to have hit an industrial area that produces Iranian-designed Shahed drones—which Moscow uses extensively in the war in Ukraine. It marked the first time a drone from Ukraine had reached the republic, and it’s the deepest strike inside Russian soil since the war began, according to local media outlets.
Russia has been hit with waves of drone strikes since President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with some attacks reaching the capital Moscow. Many strikes have targeted ammunition depots and warehouses. Ukraine rarely claims responsibility for attacks on Russian soil, but the Kremlin has accused Kyiv of trying to carry out terrorist attacks using drones.
Newsweek has contacted the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Russia for comment by email.
“For the first time, a Ukrainian drone flew to a target 1,200 km away,” the Crimean Wind Telegram channel said.
X (formerly Twitter) user “markito0171”, who posts regular updates on the war in Ukraine, shared a map on Tuesday that shows the drones’ trajectory.
A video shared by Russian Telegram channels on Tuesday appeared to show the moment a drone struck a site in Yelabuga, causing a huge fireball.
Russian state-run news agency Tass said at least seven people were wounded, including two teenagers.
Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview with German national daily newspaper Die Welt, published on Monday, that Kyiv now has drones capable of striking targets more than 1,000 kilometers [620 miles] away.
“Most of the drones that attacked Russian oil refineries have a range of 700 to 1,000 kilometers [435 to 620 miles], but now there are models that can fly more than 1,000 kilometers,” Fedorov said.
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Just weeks ago, Verstka, an independent Russian news outlet that was founded shortly after the Ukraine war began, published a map that showed that the latest drone attacks on Russian soil have widened the area of the country in Ukraine’s firing range to 1.045 million square kilometers [403,476 square miles].
Verstka cited a drone strike in March on a metallurgical factory belonging to steelmaker Severstal in the city of Cherepovets, which is in Russia’s Vologda region. The news outlet said it was one of the “most distant targets” from Ukraine’s front lines that have been attacked on Russian soil since the war began.
“The attack on the enterprise in Cherepovets expanded Russia’s potentially vulnerable territory to attacks by the Ukrainian army by 45 thousand square kilometers [17,375 square miles],” Verstka said. “Now it is about 1,045,000 square kilometers. It contains six million-plus cities, including two federal cities—Moscow and St. Petersburg.”
Verstka added: “Previously, in the northeastern direction, drones flew to St. Petersburg and Yaroslavl, where the targets were the Nevsky Mazut plant and the Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.