Kyiv Launches Over 1,000 Drones at Russia, Sets St. Petersburg Oil Sites Ablaze

Ukraine launched more than 1,000 drones at targets across Russia overnight, sparking large fires at an oil export terminal and a fuel depot in St. Petersburg in one of the largest aerial bombardments of the war, according to ABC News. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said it shot down roughly 1,015 drones near Moscow and several other western regions, the same report said.

St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov confirmed one person was killed and five others were wounded in the city, where emergency crews worked through the morning to extinguish fires at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot and nearby industrial warehouses, according to ABC News. Twelve apartment buildings and two houses sustained damage in the strikes, Kyiv Independent reported.

Data centers and a bridge also hit

Beyond the oil terminal, the overnight barrage struck a VKontakte data center and an Ozon logistics center in Leningrad Oblast, along with a bridge and two transformer substations in the town of Yanino, according to Kyiv Independent. The substation strikes knocked out power to roughly 20,000 people. VKontakte said its services remained operational despite the strike on its data center, and Ozon said it evacuated employees from its logistics center with no injuries, the outlet reported.

The St. Petersburg Oil Terminal has a throughput capacity of roughly 12.5 million tons of petroleum products a year, making it one of the larger fuel-export facilities on Russia’s Baltic coast, Kyiv Independent reported. Regional governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said 127 drones were intercepted over Leningrad Oblast specifically, a figure separate from the Russian Defense Ministry’s nationwide tally.

Retaliation after a collapsed energy truce

The scale of the attack follows the collapse of a US-brokered “energy ceasefire” that Trump had pushed both sides to observe. Ukraine had paused strikes on Russian oil infrastructure to comply with the proposal, but resumed targeting after Russia did not observe the truce, according to ABC News.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had carried out at least 76 attacks on Ukrainian energy, oil and gas targets over the preceding week, and that Ukraine absorbed roughly 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles from Russia in that span, the same report said. Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight killed at least two people and injured more than a dozen others, according to ABC News.

The exchange lands days after this desk reported Trump waived a round of Russia sanctions tied to a diesel-trade arrangement, a decision Zelenskyy said would embolden Moscow. Zelenskyy has separately pressed allies to maintain sanctions pressure regardless of Washington’s posture, and warned that any pause in that pressure would intensify the broader war.

Air-defense strain on both sides

The St. Petersburg strikes also come as Ukraine itself faces a shortage of Patriot interceptors needed to defend against Russia’s missile and drone campaigns, a gap this desk covered Sunday. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Ukrainian strikes were incapable of “changing the course of events,” according to Kyiv Independent, even as the scale of the barrage — Russia’s defense ministry put the number of drones downed above 1,000 — marked one of the largest single-night totals of the war.

Neither government has indicated the overnight exchange will pause further strikes. Kyiv has intensified long-range strikes on Russian energy infrastructure through the fall, and Moscow has continued missile and drone campaigns against Ukrainian cities, a pattern that has shown no sign of easing as both sides enter the winter heating season. This desk will continue tracking strikes on energy infrastructure on both sides as the campaign develops.