A large Ukrainian drone attack on St Petersburg in Russia killed at least one person and injured five others on Sunday, according to the city governor. Alexandre Beglov stated that firefighters were tackling fires at the St Petersburg oil terminal, the Ruchi oil depot, and industrial warehouses located in the Kolpino district south of the city.
Beglov added that several apartment buildings and two houses were also struck during the raid. City authorities reported that flight operations at St Petersburg’s main airport, one of the busiest in the country, were restricted for safety reasons.
Commercial facilities also sustained damage during the aerial assault. Russian e-commerce firm Ozon reported a fire at its logistics hub in the city. Internet company VK said its data centre in the Leningrad region was targeted by drones, though normal services remained available to users.
Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region, stated that air defence systems shot down 145 drones, leaving roughly 20,000 residents without electricity. Russia’s state-run news agency TASS described the operation as the largest drone attack on the region in four years. Moscow’s defence ministry claimed that 1,015 Ukrainian drones were neutralised overnight.
Across the border, Russian forces struck residential buildings overnight, killing two people and injuring 12, including two children, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X on Sunday. He also reported a morning strike on an agricultural enterprise in Volyn, stating that all necessary services were operating at the site.
Zelenskyy stated that over the past week, Russia had attacked Ukraine with nearly 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs, and 66 missiles, mostly ballistic ones. The Ukrainian leader had previously told the Financial Times that Kyiv was finished with an energy ceasefire unilaterally declared by United States President Donald Trump and would resume targeting Russian refineries in retaliation.
Zelenskyy wrote that since the American president announced the energy ceasefire a week prior, Russia had deliberately attacked Ukraine’s energy, oil, and gas sectors 76 times. He stated that strikes hit substations in the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi, and Odesa regions, leaving tens of thousands of families without power while repair crews worked continuously.
Zelenskyy argued that the main objective of Moscow’s recent strikes was to cause a blackout. America should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements, he added.
The escalation came after Trump signed an executive order on Friday to waive sanctions and tariffs targeting Moscow’s energy revenues, drawing criticism in Europe and the US. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained on Saturday that the waiver served as a 60-day pause to analyse the impact of economic restrictions on the global and US economies. Trump defended the decision late on Saturday, stating it would benefit the United States and the world.
