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About an hour before that Mordovia attack, Russia’s civil aviation authority halted flights at airports in two of the country’s largest cities, Nizhny Novgorod and Tatarstan’s Kazan, because of safety concerns.

Last month, a woman in the city of Nizhny Novgorod was detained for five days after police spotted her wearing earrings featuring a rainbow symbol.

The reports of the fighting in the border region coincided with Ukrainian drone attacks throughout central Russia, including a strike on an oil refinery near Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow.

This was the year that Rurik, a Scandinavian prince, was invited to rule over the city of Novgorod, the capital of the Rus - the people who would eventually develop into today's Russians.

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Saturday that a military airfield in the Novgorod region where such planes are stationed had been attacked by a Ukrainian drone and one plane had been damaged.