Ukraine Strikes St Petersburg Oil Terminal in Deepest Attack
Ukraine struck Russia’s second city overnight in what Moscow said was an attack by some 500 long-range drones, setting the St Petersburg Oil Terminal ablaze and targeting the Kronstadt naval base, more than 850km from Ukraine’s border. President Zelensky said his forces “struck port oil infrastructure that generates revenue for Russia’s war”. One person was killed in Bryansk and one in Crimea. President Putin signed emergency tax changes to prop up Russia’s domestic fuel market the same day.
Two days after Moscow’s deadliest strike on Kyiv killed at least 30, Ukraine has answered at scale — and the target choice is the strategy: the terminal ships 12.5m tonnes of petroleum products a year, and Ukraine’s long-range campaign has produced fuel queues and shortages across Russia, with Kyiv claiming a large share of Russian refining capacity is now out of action. Putin’s tax-code intervention is a rare tacit admission the shortages bite. The escalation spiral on both sides frames the air-defence and aid agenda at next week’s NATO summit. Watch Russia’s retaliation, and fuel-market data from both countries.