The airport of the Russian metropolis of Kazan suspended flights to "guarantee the protection of civilian plane flights," the press secretary of Russia's Federal Air Transport Company Artem Korenyako reported on its Telegram channel on Dec. 28.
Operations on the airport had been suspended at 6 a.m. following a Ukrainian drone assault allegedly focusing on the Russian areas of Voronezh, Rostov, and Belgorod, with Russian state media Tass reporting that 56 drones had been shot down in complete.
This info can't be independently verified. Ukraine hasn't commented on the assault.
"To make sure the protection of flights of civil plane, momentary restrictions on the operation of Kazan airport have been launched," Korenyako mentioned. Such restrictions had been lifted a couple of hours later.
In line with Korenyako, comparable measures had been beforehand applied and lifted on Dec. 27 in a number of Russian airports, together with Kazan itself in Tatarstan area, Sochi in Krasnodar area, and Astrakhan within the namesake area.
These restrictions come within the wake of the crash of an Azerbaijan Airways aircraft on Dec. 25, which can have been allegedly shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile.
The aircraft, which was carrying passengers from Baku, Azerbaijan to Grozny within the Russian republic of Chechnya, crashed close to the coastal metropolis of Aktau in Kazakhstan.
A number of media experiences speculated that Russian air defenses struck the aircraft throughout air protection operations towards a Ukrainian drone assault in Chechnya on the identical morning of Dec. 25.
The identical restriction had been additionally applied within the airports of Kazan and its neighboring metropolis of Izhevsk after Ukrainian drones hit a number of buildings within the space on Dec. 21.
Kyiv has intensified its drone strike marketing campaign on Russian territory, focusing on navy and industrial amenities to weaken Russia's struggle effort in Ukraine.
On Nov. 25, drones operated by Ukraine's navy intelligence company (HUR) struck an oil depot within the western Russian metropolis of Kaluga.
These assaults comply with Ukraine's first use of U.S.-made ATACMS missiles towards Russia and subsequent launches of UK-made Shadow missiles, made doable after Washington eased long-range assault restrictions.
The Kyiv IndependentThe Kyiv Independent news desk