Ukraine Strikes St. Petersburg Oil Terminal in Biggest Attack Yet
More than 1,000 drones were launched across Russia overnight; St. Petersburg’s governor said one person was killed and five were injured as fires burned at the city’s oil terminal.
Ukraine launched more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight in one of the largest aerial attacks of the war, setting the St. Petersburg oil terminal and the city’s Ruchyi oil depot ablaze.
St. Petersburg Gov. Alexander Beglov said one person was killed and five were injured in the attack. He said 12 apartment buildings and two houses were damaged, and emergency crews were still fighting fires at the terminal, the depot and industrial warehouses in the Kolpinsky district.
Pulkovo Airport temporarily suspended operations during the attack. Russian media reported 15 flights were canceled and 25 delayed. A drone struck a cable-stayed bridge on the Western High-Speed Diameter, the toll highway linking the north and south of the city; the extent of the damage was still being assessed.
The strikes reached beyond the oil facilities. The e-commerce company Ozon confirmed that one of its warehouses in the Kolpinsky district was hit and set on fire, forcing staff to evacuate. The social media platform VKontakte said its regional data center was attacked but that its services remained available.
In the surrounding Leningrad region, Gov. Alexander Drozdenko said two transformer substations in Yanino were knocked out, cutting power to about 20,000 people. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses shot down 1,015 drones across 15 regions, Crimea and the Black Sea — a figure that could not be independently verified.
The attack is the biggest St. Petersburg has faced since the war began, and it shatters the fragile “energy ceasefire” President Donald Trump announced on Oct. 11. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on X on Sunday morning that Russia had struck Ukraine’s own oil and gas facilities 76 times in the past week, causing blackouts for tens of thousands of families.
Ukraine confirmed Thursday that it had resumed strikes on Russian oil facilities after a three-day pause. Trump has rebuked Kyiv for hitting Russia’s refineries, saying the strikes push up global fuel prices, and on Friday he signed an order waiving the Graham Act sanctions package against Russia’s oil and gas industry.
The Ukrainian military had not officially commented on the overnight attack. Casualty and damage figures are Russian official claims and have not been independently verified.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
