War in Ukraine: One dead and two Russian oil sites burned after massive drone attack

This Sunday morning, part of the sky was obscured by smoke in the south of St. Petersburg and a burning smell could be felt. Dozens of Ukrainian drones targeted two oil sites overnight, causing fires. “As a result of this massive attack carried out with military drones by the Ukrainians, one person was killed and five others were injured and are hospitalized,” said the city’s governor, Alexander Beglov.

He specified that firefighters were continuing their operations to extinguish the fire on the site of the oil terminal, the “Routchi oil depot” as well as in “industrial warehouses in the Kolpino district”, located in the south of Saint Petersburg.

20,000 people deprived of electricity

Russian online commerce giant OZON, whose warehouses have been the target of repeated Ukrainian attacks in recent months, announced that “one of its logistics centers” had been hit by a drone. According to Governor Alexander Beglov, a dozen residential buildings and two individual houses were also damaged. Overnight, Russian air defenses shot down 145 drones in the Leningrad region, which surrounds the northwest city, regional governor Alexander Drozdenko reported on Telegram. He said that around 20,000 people were without electricity due to technical incidents caused by these attacks.

According to the TASS news agency, this is the largest drone attack carried out against this region since the start of the war, taking as a criterion the number of machines officially shot down. The previous record dated June 6, with 144 drones destroyed during a Ukrainian attack carried out while the international economic forum was being held in Saint Petersburg.

A short-term energy truce

Saint Petersburg and its region are home to significant oil infrastructure essential for the hydrocarbon trade, a sector particularly targeted by Ukraine in recent months in retaliation for Russian bombings. Since the beginning of October, the kyiv army has also struck several data centers, belonging in particular to the tech giant Yandex.