A large overnight Ukrainian drone attack set two oil facilities in St Petersburg on fire early on Sunday, October 18, killing one person and injuring five others in Russia’s second-largest city, according to Governor Alexander Beglov. Fire crews were still fighting blazes at the St Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot and industrial warehouses in the Kolpino district hours after the strikes, he said.
Warehouse, data centre and homes damaged
Beglov said 12 apartment buildings and two private houses were damaged in the city. Pulkovo Airport was shut for a time, and residents were warned that mobile internet could be disrupted.
Online retailer Ozon, often described as Russia’s answer to Amazon, said a drone had hit its local logistics centre and started a fire. Staff were evacuated and nobody was hurt there, the company said. Social network VKontakte confirmed that its regional data centre had also been targeted, but said its services were running normally after users reported outages in the early hours.
In the surrounding Leningrad region, Governor Alexander Drozdenko said four people were taken to hospital. Drone debris fell on an apartment block in Gatchina, 55 parked cars were damaged in Novosyolye, and an emergency power cut left about 20,000 people in 50 apartment buildings without electricity, he said.
More than 1,000 drones, Moscow says
Russia’s defence ministry said its air defences destroyed 1,015 Ukrainian drones overnight over Russian territory, annexed Crimea and the Black Sea. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said 512 of them had been heading towards the capital region and that most were destroyed far from the city. Kyiv did not immediately comment on the St Petersburg strikes. The city’s oil terminal was last hit in July.
Ukraine was also under fire overnight. President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian strikes on residential buildings killed two people and injured 12, and that substations in the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Odesa regions were hit, leaving tens of thousands of families without power. Russia’s defence ministry said it struck a Nova Poshta logistics centre in Rivne and a cargo ship about 30 km east of Odesa, claiming both were used to move military or dual-use goods. Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.
Why it matters: a ceasefire in name only
The attack comes a week after US President Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” between the two countries. Ukraine paused its strikes on Russian oil sites for three days after that announcement, but resumed them this week, saying Moscow had kept bombing its grid. Trump criticised the resumption and called for a truce to help a deal he struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import Russian diesel, which Washington hopes will ease fuel prices that have soared during the Iran war. The temporary suspension of US sanctions on Russia that came with it has drawn criticism, including from some Republicans.
Zelensky said Russia had attacked Ukraine’s energy, oil and gas sector 76 times since the truce was declared, and had fired nearly 2,700 drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles at the country in the past week.
America should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements.
Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine
What comes next
Both sides have been hitting each other’s energy infrastructure harder as winter approaches, and the United Nations said on Friday that the first two weeks of October were the deadliest for Ukrainian civilians in years. Relations between Kyiv and Washington have already frayed over the diesel deal, which Zelensky has likened to the US investing in Russia’s war effort.
