Ukraine Launches Its Largest Drone Attack of the War
Russia’s defence ministry says it neutralised 1,015 Ukrainian drones overnight across fifteen regions, Crimea and the Black Sea — the largest aerial attack of the war. Fires burned at the St Petersburg oil terminal and the Ruchi depot, one person was killed and five injured there, and about 20,000 homes in the Leningrad region lost power.
The thousand-drone figure is the Russian defence ministry’s own and describes what it says it shot down rather than what Ukraine says it launched; Kyiv has not given a number. What is attributed locally is more specific. Alexander Beglov, the St Petersburg governor, said firefighters were tackling blazes at the two oil sites and at industrial warehouses in the Kolpinsky district, and that the city’s main airport was restricting flights “for safety reasons”. Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding region, put the drones downed there at 145. The retaliation came within hours: Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv, said a Russian strike killed a woman overnight, hit a subway station and damaged a twenty-five-storey residential block and a medical facility, injuring three more. Two attacks on Zaporizhzhia killed a woman and wounded a six-year-old girl. Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia has used almost 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles in the past week and has struck Ukraine’s energy, oil and gas sector seventy-six times since the energy ceasefire was declared — Ukraine’s own count, and not independently confirmed.