Ukrainian drones hit St Petersburg oil terminal and nearby port

Ukraine launched a big overnight drone attack on St Petersburg and the surrounding area, hitting the city’s oil terminal and port infrastructure in the wider region.The St Petersburg governor, Alexander Beglov, said the city had been subjected to a “large-scale” drone attack that had hit its oil terminal. He said there were no casualties and the aftermath of the attack had been dealt with.Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding Leningrad region, said a drone had struck the area of Vysotsk port, about 170km (105 miles) north-west of St Petersburg on the Baltic Sea. The port handles oil, grain, coal and liquefied natural gas.Drozdenko said 72 drones had been shot down over the region, and there was minor damage in several settlements. He gave no information on the impact on Vysotsk port.Volodymyr Zelenskyy describes the attacks as part of Ukraine’s continuing ‘long-range sanctions’ against Russia. Photograph: zelenskyy_officialIn a post on Telegram, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described the attack as part of Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” against Russia.Zelenskyy said: “Ukraine’s defence forces struck port oil infrastructure that generates revenue for Russia’s war, and also hit Kronstadt, an important military target more than 850km (530 miles) from Ukraine’s state border.”The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, dismissed the strikes on energy facilities as “not critical”.There was no Russian confirmation of a strike on Kronstadt, a major naval base near St Petersburg that Ukraine also targeted in an attack last month.Ukraine has intensified strikes on Russian energy infrastructure this year, inflicting heavy damage on refineries and causing petrol shortages across the country’s 11 time zones.Elsewhere, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region and the Russian-installed governor of Crimea said drone strikes had killed one person in each region, with several more wounded.South of St Petersburg, the governor of Pskov region said more than 30 drones had been shot down overnight. He reported minor damage and injuries, including at a factory in the town of Velikiye Luki.Zelenskyy also denied Russian claims that the eastern city of Kostiantynivka had been captured by Moscow’s military.Russia’s military told president Putin on Friday that its forces had taken control of the city, a target that the Kremlin has long sought in its advance through the Donetsk region.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionZelenskyy wrote on X: “Of course, that is not true. It is just another Russian lie, an attempt to generate some kind of a news story.“If Kostiantynivka were under Russian control, then perhaps [the Russian president, Vladimir] Putin would have no problem meeting me there to find a diplomatic way to finally end this war.”Ukraine’s general staff also said Kostiantynivka remained under the control of Ukrainian forces.It said in a statement: “Military units and subunits of the 19th army corps of the eastern grouping continue to conduct defensive operations on designated lines within the town and on its approaches.”Kostiantynivka is the southernmost of four key settlements that form a defensive line central to Ukraine’s effort to hold a final part of the heavily industrialised Donetsk region.Russia’s defence ministry also claimed it had taken five villages in eastern Ukraine: Shyikivka, Novyi Myr, Cherneshchyna and Druzhelyubivka in Kharkiv region, and Vasylivka in Donetsk region.