Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Russia overnight, leaving one person dead and setting an oil depot ablaze on the final day of the country’s flagship economic forum in Saint Petersburg, officials said.
Many of the drones targeted Saint 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.
Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fifth year, remain stalled and sidetracked by the conflict in the Middle East.
The strikes come a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s proposal for a meeting, drawing criticism from Zelenskyy, who accused him of “choosing war again”.
The Russian defence ministry said 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 annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, while Abkhazia is a region of Georgia that Russia military occupies.
Over 140 drones were shot down over the Leningrad region, which surrounds Saint Petersburg, governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said.
The city’s governor, Alexander Beglov, issued a rare call for residents to stay indoors during the attack.
Ukraine’s SBU security services said they had targeted the city’s Kronstadt naval base, as well as “the Russian Navy’s 15th Arsenal in the Leningrad region”.
The attacks also sparked a fire at an oil depot in the southern town of Ust-Labinsk, while drone debris killed a man in the western Tver region, according to local officials.
Zelenskyy described the strikes as a “just response” to Russian aggression against Ukraine.
He said: “It is time to end this war. But Russia’s ruler wants to keep fighting. That is why Ukrainian sanctions against this aggression are working. Any manifestation of injustice against Ukraine will receive a just response.”
- AFP
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