Ukraine responds to Trump by hitting Putin's city with the largest drone attack of the war

Ukraine responded this Sunday to the latest decisions in favor of Russia by the president of the United States, Donald Trump, launching the largest attack of the war against the second city of the neighboring country, Saint Petersburg, in which one person has died and a dozen have been injured.

Some 150 drones have wreaked havoc during the early hours of the morning on the oil, logistics and digital infrastructure of the hometown of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the adjacent Leningrad region. "I haven't been able to sleep all night. The battle between drones and anti-aircraft missiles took place literally above our heads," said a resident of the former tsarist capital.

The governor of Saint Petersburg, Alexandr Glebov, has reported one dead and a dozen wounded in the night attacks against the city and Leningrad, of whom five are still hospitalized. According to preliminary data, the deceased lost his life when a fragment of an unmanned fixed-wing aircraft fell on his car.

In addition, a dozen residential buildings and two private homes have been damaged. The tenants of some properties have had to be evacuated to Casas de Cultura. A drone has also hit a bridge in the city, a hospital and sections of an urban highway have had to be closed.

These attacks have taken place shortly after the White House sealed an agreement with the Kremlin for the supply of Russian diesel to the US and the international market, pumping that has not yet begun, with the supposed purpose of reducing fuel prices before the legislative elections on November 3.

Trump, who had stopped at the last minute the entry into force on Sunday of the sanctions package known as the Graham Act, which punished importers of Russian oil and the so-called 'ghost fleet', clearly said that his priority was not the Ukrainians, but American farmers and truckers.

Meanwhile, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Alexandr Nóvak, assured this Sunday on public television that, once the contracts with the American companies are signed, Moscow will take about 15-20 days to begin supplying its diesel to consumers in the United States.

In this context, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, had resumed attacks against Russian refineries on Thursday after Trump announced an energy truce that Russia ignored - 76 Russian attacks against energy targets since then, according to Kiev - but this Sunday's bombing has gone further, since it has practically paralyzed a city of more than five million inhabitants for a few hours.

The attacks have caused fires at two oil terminals, according to Ukrainian authorities and Telegram channels. One of them (Ruchi) is the largest in the city with a storage capacity of almost 74,000 cubic meters. Eyewitnesses posted videos on social networks with images of the fire in said facilities.

Precisely, Ruchi is used to supply AI-92 and AI-95 diesel. The other terminal has 21 fuel tanks, according to the local press.

The Ukrainian drones have also damaged a data center of Vkontakte – the Russian Facebook – in Leningrad and a warehouse of the e-commerce company Ozon of almost 80,000 square meters, which was also caught in the flames, according to the Astra channel.

Precisely, this Saturday Putin had ordered the Russian government a program to rebuild the commercial and logistics infrastructure damaged by Ukrainian drones, which had attacked data centers of the electronic giant Yandex and the largest Russian bank, Sberbank, in recent weeks.

In total, according to first estimates, some 20,000 people have been left without electricity for a few hours due to the damage caused to the Vostóchonaya substation.

The Russian authorities, who have admitted fires in numerous infrastructures of the city bathed by the Gulf of Finland, have had to impose restrictions on the operations of the Pulkovo airport for security reasons.

The same has happened at Moscow's main airports, where hundreds of flights have been canceled or delayed in recent days, forcing some passengers to stay up to 40 hours in port facilities. For example, a plane from Egypt had to land this Sunday in Finland.

If the Russian army wants to force kyiv to capitulate with massive attacks against its energy facilities before winter, the Ukrainian army wants to paralyze the neighboring country's air transport, which Zelensky already warned foreign airlines about and which Putin called "state terrorism."

In total, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense, anti-aircraft defenses have shot down more than a thousand enemy drones overnight over fifteen regions of the European part of the country and the annexed Crimean peninsula.

On the other hand, Russian attacks in Ukraine have continued. As reported this Sunday by the State Emergency Service, two people have died in the Ukrainian regions of Poltava and Zaporizhia, in eastern and southern Ukraine, respectively.

In Poltava, several homes have been damaged, in one of which a fire broke out that rescue teams managed to extinguish. However, one person has died and four others have been injured. At the scene, DSNS canine teams have worked to search for possible missing persons.