Ukrainian drones hit an oil terminal in St Petersburg and a warship in dry-dock at a nearby naval base, hours before Vladimir Putin’s showcase economic forum got under way in the city, in a clear attempt to embarrass the Kremlin chief.
The attack on Putin’s home city, location of his own ‘Davos’ - a glitzy annual economic forum designed to attract foreign investment - comes as both sides dial up strikes against each other in their more than four-year-old war with no imminent end in sight.
The Kremlin said Russia would keep striking Ukraine systematically in response to such attacks, part of what it has described as a new “paradigm” in the conflict.
Unspecified “infrastructure objects” had been attacked in three districts of Russia’s second-biggest city and home to over 5 million people, Alexander Beglov, its governor, said. Air defences shot down 59 Ukrainian drones overnight, Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding Leningrad region, said.
“Several facilities have been damaged. Clean-up operations are currently underway. Several people have been injured. There have been no fatalities,” Beglov said in a statement.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed his drones had struck the fuel terminal and said they had also targeted a military facility in Kronstadt on an island near the city where elements of Russia’s Baltic Fleet and major shipbuilding and repair facilities are located.
Meanwhile, a drone strike killed seven people and wounded 11 as it hit a bus in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine, Moscow-installed authorities in the Donetsk region said. Ukraine released a video which showed a drone striking a Russian warship, the corvette Boiky, in what it said was a dry dock at Kronstadt. Reuters was able to verify the location of the attack and the model of the vessel, but could not independently verify how seriously the ship or the oil terminal had been damaged.
Unconfirmed video posted to social media showed locals filming Ukrainian aeroplane-style drones as they flew over parts of the city as fires appeared to rage at the export fuel terminal in the background. What sounded like anti-aircraft fire could be heard as one drone flew on unhindered.
