Ukrainian drone attacks in St. Petersburg targeted military and energy infrastructure overnight into Wednesday, setting ablaze a Russian warship and oil depots on the Baltic coast. This attack deep in Russian territory came on the opening day of Putin's three-day economic forum held in the city and as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte arrived in Kyiv for an unannounced visit.
Ukrainian long-range drones struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg and set it ablaze, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday, sending smoke billowing over the city where President Vladimir Putin was born as it hosts Russia’s leading event for attracting foreign capital.
The drones flew more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) to hit the terminal in Russia’s second-largest city, Zelensky said on social media, a day after Moscow launched a major drone and missile attack on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
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Russian authorities said only that the Ukrainian drone strike targeted St. Petersburg’s infrastructure, without providing details. The city's airport briefly suspended flights overnight because of the attack. Authorities cut off mobile internet services.
With the front line barely moving as swarms of drones hinder advances, both sides have sought an edge by launching long-range strikes. The war that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour is more than four years old, with no end in sight.
The latest strikes are an embarrassment for Putin, weeks after he pruned back an annual Victory Day parade in Moscow due to fears of Ukrainian drone attacks.
Putin is set to speak on Friday at the economic forum in St. Petersburg that the Kremlin views as a prestige event. The gathering is sometimes called Russia’s Davos, likening it to the World Economic Forum held in Switzerland.
Major Western investors and officials have stayed away since Russia launched its all-out war against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Saudi Arabia is a special guest this year and is due to send a large business delegation.
Zelensky said Ukraine aimed only at “legitimate targets” related to Russia's war effort and indicated that Kyiv plans to escalate its long-range drone attacks. "It is only a matter of time when we will be able to increase the scale of our own mass strikes,” he told reporters.
The strikes on St. Petersburg came a day after Russia's attack on Ukraine killed 23 civilians and wounded 151 other people, as Moscow followed through with its threat of escalating its barrages.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Russia’s deep strikes have already taken on a “systematic” character.
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Ukraine’s own long-range attacks are aimed at diminishing Russia’s oil production, which is a key source of funding for Moscow, and disrupting weapon production. Kyiv has repeatedly targeted oil facilities in St. Petersburg and nearby ports.
But Ukraine is short of American-made Patriot air defence missiles, in part because of US stocks being depleted by the Iran war, leaving it vulnerable to Russia's ballistic missiles.
Zelensky on Wednesday expressed frustration with his own government's officials, saying there's an agreement “at the highest political level” for the purchase of Patriot systems, but implementation is being held up by financial, legal and technical considerations.
“The wait has taken too long,” he said on social media, demanding that officials unblock the purchase or there will be “serious personnel decisions".
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, visiting Kyiv on Wednesday for talks with Ukrainian officials, said the flow of interceptor missiles from the US to Ukraine continues. The US is “doing what it can” to keep supplying them although it is limited by the production rate, he told a news conference.
Rutte also said young Russians and their families “are being sold a raw deal” by Moscow, as incorporation in the Russian military dooms soldiers to poor training and equipment and low chances of surviving battlefield wounds.
Other Ukrainian drone attacks overnight set fire to the Russian guided-missile corvette Boikiy, which was in dry dock at the Kronstadt naval base, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. Kronstadt is an old base for Russia’s Baltic Fleet located west of St. Petersburg.
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Drones also hit a Russian manufacturing plant involved in weapon production in the Tambov region, 600 kilometres (370 miles) from Ukraine, Zelensky said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defences downed 354 Ukrainian drones overnight.
In the Russia-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a Ukrainian strike hit a bus that was traveling from Moscow to the Crimean Peninsula, killing seven people and wounding 11 others, according to the Kremlin-appointed head of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin.
In the Smolensk region, two firefighters were killed by a Ukrainian drone attack, according to the regional governor, Vasily Anokhin. He said that two other firefighters and a local resident were wounded.
Meanwhile, Russia fired 198 long-range drones at Ukraine last night, according to Ukraine’s air force, with air defences neutralising 189.
Authorities in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region said that over the previous 24 hours, one civilian was killed and 15 more were wounded, including three children, by Russian strikes.
In the southern Kherson, Russian overnight shelling and drone strikes killed an 86-year-old woman and wounded five other people, according to regional authorities.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
