A Ukrainian drone strike on a dormitory in Tatarstan on Tuesday has injured 13 people, the region’s head told Russian business outlet RBC, and is believed to be the longest-range drone strike yet carried out by Ukraine, according to Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.
At 5:45 am on Tuesday, two drones struck a dormitory in Alabuga, a region of the majority-Muslim republic in central Russia that enjoys special economic status due to its many factories.
The 12 injured were all teenage students at the Alabuga Polytechnic educational centre, where Shahed drones are assembled, according to the publications Razvorot and Protocol. Eight of the injured students were hospitalised, RIA Novosti reported, citing the regional authorities.
A third drone was aimed at an oil refinery in Nizhnekamsk, another city in Tatarstan, whose mayor, Ramil Mullin, told state news agency TASS that the drone had been shot down by a missile defence system.
However, photos that subsequently emerged clearly show that a drone did indeed hit the Tatarstan Oil Refining Complex, Russia’s third-largest oil refinery, which has a production capacity of 340,000 barrels per day, Reuters reported.
Regional authorities told TASS that a fire caused by the drone had been quickly extinguished and “nothing was destroyed”.
This was the first time Ukrainian drones have successfully reached Tatarstan, according to independent news outlet IStories.
Ukrainian attacks on facilities connected with the Russian oil industry have become commonplace. By mid-March, these attacks had disabled approximately 16% of Russian vehicle fuel production — a loss of between 0.7 million and 1.1 million tons of diesel fuel per month, according to calculations made by Novaya Gazeta Europe.
