Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Russia early on Saturday, leaving one person dead and setting an oil depot ablaze on the final day of Russia’s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg, officials said. Many of the drones targeted St Petersburg itself, the second Ukrainian attack on the city in less than a week, with Ukraine’s SBU security services saying it had hit a naval base.
The strikes come a day after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, rejected Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposal for a meeting, drawing criticism from the Ukrainian president, who accused him of “choosing war again”.
More than 140 drones were shot down over the Leningrad region, which surrounds St Petersburg, governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said. The city’s governor, Alexander Beglov, issued a rare call for residents to stay indoors during the attack. “Russian air defences prevented any damage. The condition of the three injured is assessed as minor and they have been discharged,” he said.
Russian air defences intercepted a total of 376 drones over the regions of “Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula, the Moscow region, Crimea Republic, Abkhazia Republic, and over the waters of the Azov and Black Seas”, Russia’s defence ministry said.
