Drones hit St. Petersburg oil facilities overnight, killing one person. Russia said it downed more than 1,000 drones.
Drones struck oil facilities in St. Petersburg overnight into Sunday, killing one person and injuring five, in what appeared to be the largest attack the city has seen in the war, ABC News reported. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it shot down about 1,015 Ukrainian drones near Moscow and several other western regions. Kyiv had not commented on the strikes, the BBC reported.
St. Petersburg Gov. Alexander Beglov said crews were fighting fires at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot and industrial warehouses in the city’s Kolpinsky district. He said 12 apartment buildings and two homes were damaged, and Pulkovo Airport was temporarily closed. A logistics center belonging to the online retailer Ozon caught fire, and the company said staff were evacuated and no one was hurt. The social network VK confirmed a drone targeted its regional data center, but said its services were available as usual despite reports of outages. In the surrounding Leningrad region, Gov. Alexander Drozdenko said two transformer substations in Yanino were struck, leaving about 20,000 people without electricity Sunday morning. The city’s oil terminal was last hit in July, according to the BBC.
The strikes came after a short pause. President Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” last weekend, and Ukraine halted attacks on Russian oil facilities for three days while accusing Russia of continuing to hit its energy sector, the BBC reported. Ukraine resumed the strikes earlier this week, drawing criticism from Trump, who called for a truce to support a deal he struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin to supply diesel. ABC News reported that the Kremlin did not observe the ceasefire.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia carried out at least 76 attacks on energy, oil and gas targets over the past week. He said Russia launched nearly 2,700 drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles in that period, most of them aimed at energy facilities. Overnight attacks on substations in four regions, including Odesa, killed at least two people and injured at least a dozen, he said, and tens of thousands of families remain without power. The United Nations noted Friday that the first two weeks of October were the deadliest for Ukrainian civilians in years, the BBC reported. Russia says it targets sites used by Ukraine’s military.
The attacks come as relations between Washington and Kyiv have frayed. Trump on Friday waived new sanctions and tariffs on Russia required under a law named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Zelenskyy has suggested the diesel deal amounts to the United States investing in Russia’s war effort. He said Saturday that he expects further easing of sanctions on Putin and that Washington should see that Russia is taking no reciprocal steps. Both sides have intensified strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter, as the full-scale invasion enters its fifth year.
Information for this report was provided by the BBC and ABC News.