Ukrainian Drone Barrage Targets St. Petersburg as Economic Forum Ends

The Russian city of St. Petersburg was targeted by a fresh barrage of long-range Ukrainian drones on Saturday as an international economic forum in the city came to a close.

In the Leningrad Region which surrounds St. Petersburg (formerly known as Leningrad), local governor Alexander Drosdenko said air defenses shot down 141 drones in an "unprecedented attack," while people within the city were warned to take shelter.

"In accordance with the recommendations of the emergency response team, I ask the residents of St. Petersburg to stay in their homes and not to go out onto the streets," city governor Alexander Beglov wrote on Telegram, adding: "There may be interruptions to mobile internet."

The nearby island of Kronstadt in the Gulf of Finland, home to Russia's Baltic Fleet, was also targeted, causing a fire. "Such special operations weaken the Baltic Fleet," said the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), claiming to have hit missile and ammunition arsenals.

Just to the south of Kronstadt on the Russian mainland, local media reported that 600 people had to leave their homes in the coastal town of Bolshaya Ishora, while St. Peterburg's Pulkovo Airport, used by many of the economic forum's international guests, temporarily halted flights.

The attacks on St. Petersburg and the surrounding region, some 1,000 kilometers north of Ukraine, were part of a broader wave of attacks across several Russian regions.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that a total of 376 Ukrainian drones were "intercepted" over Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula regions, Moscow region, Crimea Republic, Abkhazia Republic, and over the waters of the Azov and Black Seas – regions covering thousands of square kilometers of the vast Russian Federation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the strikes as a "just response" to continued Russian aggression against Ukraine, over four years on from Russia's full-scale invasion.

The Ukrainian air force said on Saturday that it had shot down 249 of 272 Russian drones launched against Ukraine overnight.

One person was killed and three wounded in Ukraine's eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, as Russian forces struck three districts nearly 30 times using drones and artillery.

"It is time to end this war but Russia's ruler wants to keep fighting," Zelenskyy wrote on social media, claiming that "Ukrainian sanctions against this aggression are working."

Saturday's large-scale Ukrainian drone attack was the second targeting the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in three days.

Speaking at the event in his home city on Friday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that the attacks were causing "some damage” to the economy, admitting: "These attacks naturally lead to nothing good."

But it also came a day after Putin rejected an open letter from Zelenskyy proposing direct negotiations to end the war, saying he saw "no point" in a face-to-face meeting in a neutral country.

Responding to Putin's dismissal of the proposed meeting, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday that things would "only get worse" for Russia.

"[The] failures will get more humiliating," he wrote on social media, warning that there are "no safe places in Russia that are exempt" from long-range Ukrainian attacks, and that the intensity of those attacks "will continue to grow."

On Sunday, President Zelenskyy is set to travel to London for a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The leaders are expected to discuss further support for Ukraine and the latest developments in the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" of 35 largely European nations working to support Kyiv.

"Slowly, a window for talks between the European side and Russia is opening," sources close to the German government told the dpa news agency, despite Putin's rejection of Zelenskyy's proposal.

Meanwhile, NATO forces have this weekend begun operations aimed at boosting defenses in Sweden and Finland, two Scandinavian neighbors of Russia who abandoned decades of military non-alignment to join the alliance following the invasion of Ukraine.

Both countries lie on the Baltic Sea, which is used by Russian warships heading to or from St. Petersburg or the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, while Finland, which shares a border with Russia, fought two wars against the Soviet Union during World War II.

US General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said NATO's northeastern flank is "one of the most strategically significant and environmentally challenging areas in the world."

In 2024, NATO established a new multinational military presence in Finland called the Forward Land Forces (FLF) Finland, designed to act as a rapid-reaction unit. NATO maintains similar land units in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.