Ukrainian drone strikes damaged a petroleum products export terminal on St Petersburg’s waterfront overnight on Saturday, as attacks hit energy facilities and warehouses across the surrounding region, The Maritime Executive reported. The terminal was among several sites where local authorities reported fires, alongside an oil depot and electricity infrastructure.
The local governor said on social media that drones had set fires at the St Petersburg oil terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, two transformer substations and an industrial warehouse complex. The governor reported one person killed and five injured. The account did not assign those casualties to individual sites.
According to The Maritime Executive’s assessment of bystander imagery, a tank near the centre of the Peterburgskiy Neftyanoy Terminal appeared to have been struck. The facility loads petroleum products on the port’s central waterfront and had also been hit during a large-scale Ukrainian attack in June. Ruchyi, a smaller depot on the city’s north-eastern outskirts near Piskarevsky Avenue and Shafirovskiy Prospekt, had previously suffered an explosion in September 2023.
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences had brought down more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones near Moscow, St Petersburg and neighbouring areas. The Maritime Executive described the operation as potentially Ukraine’s largest such attack, exceeding the broad strikes across western Russia in June. Other reported targets included a distribution centre belonging to online retailer Ozon and a data centre for Russian social network VKontakte.
The attacks took place against a backdrop of continued Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy system and US President Donald Trump’s request for a halt to attacks on energy sites. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched about 2,600 drones over the preceding week and struck Ukrainian power infrastructure more than 70 times. He said Russia had neither accepted Trump’s request nor tried to comply with it.