St Petersburg oil terminal hit as Russia says it downed more than 1,000 Ukrainian drones
Ukrainian drones set the Petersburg Oil Terminal and the city's Ruchyi oil depot on fire overnight into Sunday 18 October, St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said. He said one person was killed and five were injured, the BBC reported. Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces destroyed 1,015 Ukrainian drones over 15 Russian regions, annexed Crimea and the Black Sea, in what the Associated Press called one of Ukraine's largest aerial attacks of the war.
The strike came three days after Ukraine said it had resumed attacks on Russian oil facilities, ending a three-day pause that followed President Donald Trump's 11 October announcement of an "energy ceasefire" between Russia and Ukraine. WatchfulEye's earlier page covers that announcement and Kyiv's decision to resume strikes.
What was hit
- Oil sites: fires at the Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchyi oil depot, according to Beglov. The BBC said the terminal was last hit in July.
- Other targets: Ozon, the online retailer, said a drone targeted its St Petersburg logistics centre, sparking a fire, and that staff were evacuated and no one was injured. VK, the social network, said a drone targeted its regional data centre and its services were running as usual, the BBC reported.
- The city: Beglov said 12 apartment buildings and two homes were damaged and Pulkovo Airport closed for a time, according to the BBC.
- Who claimed it: Kyiv had not commented when the BBC reported on Sunday. Fire Point, a Ukrainian drone maker, said Ukraine's defence forces used its FP-1 drones to hit the oil terminal, BBC News Ukrainian reported. The company described the terminal as one of the region's largest, handling oil products including for export, with capacity of 12.5 million tonnes a year. WatchfulEye has not independently confirmed that figure.
The row with Washington
The attack lands in the middle of a public row between Kyiv and Washington. Trump has criticised Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, the AP reported, and he had called for a truce to support a deal with Vladimir Putin to supply Russian diesel to the United States, according to the BBC. WatchfulEye has a page on what that diesel licence allows.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said waiving sanctions on Russia would strengthen Putin's war effort and that US intelligence sharing had resumed after being "blocked for some period of time," the AP reported. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency Tass that Kyiv could not "change the current course of events," according to the AP.
Why it matters
WatchfulEye's read: the "energy ceasefire" now exists only as an announcement. Zelenskyy says Russia hit Ukraine's energy sector 76 times in the week after it was declared, and Ukraine has answered by striking the oil-export side of Russia's economy at scale. That puts Kyiv's main pressure tool, attacks on Russian oil revenue, directly against Washington's current approach of easing Russian diesel sales. The open question is not whether the truce holds, but whether the United States pushes Kyiv to stop, or accepts that its diesel deal sits next to an active strike campaign on the same industry.
Open questions
- How badly were the terminal and depot damaged, and for how long will loadings stop?
- Will Ukraine's General Staff formally claim the strike?
- Will the White House respond directly, and will Trump decide on further sanctions against Russia?
- Will Russia answer with further strikes on Ukraine's power grid as winter starts?