Russian war bloggers blame Kazakhstan for Ukraine's drone attacks

Ukraine claims to have caused $7 billion in damage to Russia / Photo: Generated by neural network, photo editor: Arthur Aleskerov

Russian Telegram channels accused Kazakhstan of importing drones that Ukraine used to carry out a large-scale attack on Russian airbases on June 1. The Kazakh government has not yet commented on the accusations.

On June 1, Ukrainian drones struck several Russian military facilities, including four airbases of the Russian Armed Forces in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. According to some open-source data, more than 40 aircraft were damaged in the attack, including an A-50 reconnaissance aircraft, a Tu-95 strategic missile carrier and a Tu-22M3 supersonic bomber. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed the operation codenamed «Spiderweb» was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Russian territory, near the FSB headquarters of one of the regions.

Russia confirmed the attack, announcing that «the Kyiv regime committed a terrorist attack against airfields using FPV drones.»

On the same day, pro-Russian Telegram channels began publishing information that the drones used in the attack were allegedly assembled in Chelyabinsk.

«All the spare parts [for drones] and explosives arrived via fraternal Kazakhstan,» wrote a Russian Telegram channel with 258,000 followers.

The «War with Fakes» channel, which wrote about the alleged warehouse where the drones were assembled, also mentioned that the Chelyabinsk region borders Kazakhstan, which possibly was the country from which the FPV drones entered Russia.

Kursiv.media reached out to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Defense and the National Security Committee for comment, but neither agency has responded to the inquiry yet.

Later, Aibek Smadiyarov, the official spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, commented on the accusations.

«I am not a military expert. Of course, I saw these messages in the morning. Anonymous channels on Telegram are spreading this. There is no official confirmation of these accusations, which is why I cannot confirm it. I will leave this for our experts as a theory to discuss,» he said.