Ukraine Strikes St. Petersburg Oil Terminal in 1,000-Drone Raid

St. Petersburg, Russia — Ukraine sent more than 1,000 drones at Russian oil depots, logistics centers and data centers overnight, in one of the largest air attacks it has launched since Russia's full-scale invasion, and set fires at the main oil terminal of Russia's second-largest city.

Russia's defense ministry said its air defense units destroyed 1,015 Ukrainian drones over 15 Russian regions, the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and the Black Sea. The count is Russia's own.

Fires at the oil terminal

Alexander Beglov, the governor of St. Petersburg, said fires broke out at the Petersburg Oil Terminal, at the city's Ruchyi oil depot and at industrial warehouses. He said 12 apartment buildings and two houses were damaged, that Pulkovo Airport closed for a time and that mobile internet service could be disrupted. The city's oil terminal was last hit in July.

The strikes also reached the companies that keep Russian daily life running. Ozon, the online retailer often called Russia's Amazon, said a drone set fire to its local logistics center; staff were evacuated and no one was hurt. VK, which runs the social network VKontakte, said a drone targeted its regional data center but that its services were working "as usual" after users reported outages early in the morning. Fire Point, a Ukrainian drone maker, said the Ukrainian military had struck the VK data center. Earlier this month, Ukraine carried out a series of attacks on Yandex, Russia's largest search engine, that disrupted its services.

Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region around the city, said 145 drones were shot down there and about 20,000 people were left without electricity. "A large-scale [unmanned aerial vehicle] attack continues to be repelled," he wrote on Telegram. One person was killed and 15 were wounded in the city and the region, local officials said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked how Russia would respond to the attack on St. Petersburg, said Russia was answering with systematic, large-scale strikes. "The Kyiv regime is resisting, but this cannot change the course of events," he said, according to the state news agency Tass.

A scare over a NATO country

Lithuania told people in its central and northern regions to take shelter for about an hour after an unidentified flying object entered its airspace. NATO fighter jets were scrambled, and the airport in Kaunas, the country's second-largest city, closed for a time. The jets could not identify the object through the clouds and did not try to shoot it down, Lithuania's crisis management center said.

Heorhii Tykhyi, a spokesman for Ukraine's foreign ministry, said Ukraine regretted the possible diversion of its drones into Lithuanian airspace, which he said may have been caused by Russian electronic jamming. "We apologise for any disruption, risks and concern this may have caused," he wrote. Ukrainian drones have entered NATO airspace over the Baltic region several times in recent months, and Kyiv has said Russian signal jamming steered them off course.

The fight over energy

The raid came days after Ukraine resumed strikes on Russian oil sites. On October 11, Trump announced an "energy ceasefire" that neither side said it had agreed to in advance. Ukraine paused its strikes on Russian oil facilities for three days, then resumed them, saying Russia had kept hitting Ukraine's power grid. Ukraine says the oil strikes aim at Moscow's main source of money for the war.

Zelenskyy said that in the week after Trump's announcement, Russia attacked Ukraine's energy, oil and gas facilities 76 times, and that tens of thousands of families were still without power after attacks on four regions the night before. He said Russia launched nearly 2,700 drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles in that week, most of them aimed at energy sites. Russia said it had struck Ukraine's largest steelworks, in Kryvyi Rih, and ships using the port of Odesa. In the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, Russian strikes killed a woman and wounded at least two people, including a 6-year-old girl, regional officials said.

What Washington said

In a Truth Social post that afternoon, Trump wrote that Zelenskyy "is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States." He added: "Farmers, ranchers, and businesses of all kinds are suffering greatly from this, but Russia is, nevertheless, sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World." Last week the United States struck a deal with Russia to let hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel onto world markets, aimed at bringing down fuel prices that have soared during the war with Iran.

Zelenskyy, interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press," said that deal would not have "a real influence" on U.S. prices, because they are driven by the blocked Strait of Hormuz, not by Ukraine. "America should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements," he wrote on X. "It is Russia that must face pressure for peace to have a chance."

Both countries are striking each other's energy systems with growing force as winter approaches.