Ukraine launched a large-scale overnight drone attack on St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad region on Saturday, targeting an oil terminal and a Baltic Sea port, following the deadliest Russian assault on Kyiv this year that killed 30 people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced that the country’s military had specifically targeted military and oil facilities in St. Petersburg.
Alexander Beglov, the governor of St. Petersburg, a city of approximately six million residents, stated that the area was subjected to a “large-scale” drone attack. While he did not provide details regarding the specific targets hit, the local newspaper Bumaga reported that a fire broke out at the city’s oil terminal. Circulating photographs and video footage showed a massive blaze and significant destruction at the facility.
Meanwhile, Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko reported that drones targeted the port of Vysotsk, situated on the Gulf of Finland approximately 170 kilometres northwest of St. Petersburg. The port is utilised for shipping oil, grain, coal, and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Drozdenko added that air defences shot down 72 drones over the wider Leningrad region.
Ukraine has escalated its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure this year, a strategy that has caused fuel shortages in several Russian regions. St. Petersburg, located around 900 kilometres from Ukrainian-controlled territory, has previously experienced sporadic Ukrainian drone attacks. Past targets in the city have included the oil terminal and a warship that was docked during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.
Conversely, Russian forces continued their bombardment across Ukraine. In the northern Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhoriv reported that a major Russian airstrike on the centre of Sumy city on Friday killed at least four people, including a five-year-old girl and her mother, while injuring 27 others.
“The centre of the attack was a high-rise residential building, a shop, and a street, with a very large number of people present, including children,” Hryhoriv wrote on the Telegram messaging app. He added that the injured were receiving hospital treatment, noting that a 13-year-old boy remained in critical condition.
President Zelenskiy published photographs depicting the aftermath of the Sumy attack, showing medics administering first aid to the injured, a blood-stained section of the pavement next to an abandoned pair of shoes, and a building reduced to rubble. He called on Ukraine’s allies to intensify pressure on Russia “so that terror can be stopped.”
The Sumy region, which borders Russia and faces near-constant attacks, has been a focal point for Moscow as it seeks to expand what it terms a buffer zone. An additional fatality occurred when Russian forces dropped glide bombs near the city of Sumy.
Further southeast, more than 50 strikes utilising drones, artillery shells, and bombs killed three people in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Two of the fatalities occurred near Nikopol, a town located on the bank of the Dnipro River opposite the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Dnipropetrovsk regional Governor Oleksandr Hanza stated on Telegram that 12 people were injured in the region.
In the neighbouring Zaporizhzhia region, Governor Ivan Fedorov reported that two people were killed and 21 injured in an airstrike on the city of Zaporizhzhia, which has been a frequent target of deadly attacks recently.
The ongoing violence comes as the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, observed a day of mourning following a Russian missile and drone attack that killed at least 30 people, marking the deadliest assault on the city this year.
