“Scare and shock”. After Kiev drone attack, Russians in Tatarstan begin to feel the war from 1,300 kilometers away

Unprecedented Ukrainian attacks on targets in Tatarstan far from the front line on Tuesday caused fear and panic among the residents of this region of Russia, writes The Moscow Times.

Tuesday’s drone attack on an oil refinery in the city of Nijnekamsk and a military drone production plant in the Alabuga special economic zone caught locals and local officials by surprise.

“The people of Tatarstan are scared and shocked that the war has come to them, 1,300 kilometers from the front line,” Tatar political expert Ruslan Aisin told The Moscow Times.

At least 13 people – including two minors – were injured in the attack in Alabuga, where a drone crashed into a worker’s dormitory, local publication Business Online reported, citing Tatarstan’s Ministry of Health.

All the injured were identified as students of the Polytechnic College of Alabuga. At least four were foreign nationals from unspecified countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, according to Business Online.

The students are involved in the assembly of Iranian Shahed drones, which have been produced in the special economic zone since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an investigation by the Protocol news channel and the YouTube channel Razvorot.

Many of them are forced to work at the factory under threat of deportation, according to the investigation, while parents must pay the institution “compensations” of several thousand dollars if their child is expelled.

“It’s hard to keep calm”

Tatarstan regional leader Rustam Minnihanov, who detailed the situation in the area after the attack, asked residents to remain calm.

But the comments left on Minnihanov’s post on the VKontakte network suggested rather obvious concern.

“It is difficult to keep calm when you take your children to a kindergarten that is one kilometer away from the biggest industrial sites,” wrote Alina Andreyeva, a local.

Political expert Aisin said the attack is unlikely to lead to a major wave of public outrage, even as state propaganda tries to fuel anti-Ukrainian sentiment.

“In more than two years of war, the feeling of hatred (among supporters of the war) has faded and become routine, so it will be difficult to get some kind of emotional reaction, although the Russian authorities will of course try,” he said. he said, according to The Moscow Times.

A substantial turning point

Through the media, Kiev announced that the strike in Tatarstan was the work of a joint action of the Security Service (SBU) and the Military Intelligence Service (GUR). Officially, Ukraine has not made any statements.

Authorities in Tatarstan assured that the drone assembly plant was not damaged, and Reuters wrote that the damage to the refinery was reduced.

Even so, analysts noted the distance between the Ukrainian border and the site of the attack.

Ukraine’s drone attack on industrial facilities in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan “marks a substantial turning point in Kiev’s ability to conduct long-range strikes,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) pointed out.

In recent weeks, Kiev has repeatedly struck Russian oil refineries, some located hundreds of kilometers from Ukraine’s borders, in a campaign aimed at inflicting economic costs, but also to hinder as much as possible the logistics of the war waged by Moscow.

The Financial Times reported in March that the US had asked Kiev to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, apparently over concerns that the strikes could push up global oil prices.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that targeting Russian oil and weapons facilities is a legitimate military strategy and that Ukraine has the right to use its own weapons in self-defense.

ISW supported Zelensk’s line of argument. “ISW continues to assess that such Ukrainian strikes are a necessary component of Ukraine’s campaign to use asymmetric means to degrade industries that supply and support the Russian military,” the analysts pointed out.