Four airports in Russia’s Volga region have suspended flights due to the threat of drone strikes, local media reported, citing state civil aviation agency Rosaviatsia and the airports’ press services.
Airports in Nizhny Novgorod, as well as Kazan, Nizhnekamsk and Naberezhnye Chelny in the republic of Tatarstan, have halted airline departures and arrivals as of Wednesday morning.
Rosaviatsia said at around 12:30 p.m. local time that the airports had resumed normal operations.
The SIBUR petrochemicals company is also evacuating employees from its factories in Nizhnekamsk, a local Telegram channel reported, citing eyewitnesses.
A Ukrainian drone was shot down over Tatarstan at 11:20 a.m. local time, the Defense Ministry said in a statement cited by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
Unconfirmed reports said that a Ukrainian drone was shot down near a factory in Naberezhnye Chelny.
Earlier on Wednesday, the head of the Volga region republic of Mordovia said two Ukrainian drones had been destroyed over the region overnight.
The incident marks the first attempted strike on Mordovia, a region some 700 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Earlier this month, two industrial sites in Tatarstan were hit in purported Ukrainian drone attacks in the farthest-reaching strike carried out by Kyiv’s forces since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor over two years ago.
