Ukrainian jets hit the oil terminal of St. Petersburg before the city became the economic center of Russia
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Ukrainian jets hit an oil terminal in St. Petersburg was hot, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday, billowing smoke from the city where President Vladimir Putin was born as Russia’s top event to attract foreign capital took place.
Drones flew more than 1,000 kilometers to hit the airport in Russia’s second-largest city, Zelenskyy said on social media, a day after Moscow launched massive drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.
Russian authorities said only the Ukrainian airstrike targeted infrastructure in St. Petersburg, without giving details. The city’s airport temporarily suspended overnight flights due to the attack. Authorities cut off mobile internet services.
With the front line immobile as swarms of drones block further progress, both sides seek an edge by launching long-range strikes. The war that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor has been going on for more than four years, and it has no end.
The latest strikes are another embarrassment for Putin, who a few weeks ago canceled the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow over fears of Ukrainian drone attacks.
Putin will speak on Friday at an economic forum in St. This meeting is sometimes called the Davos of Russia, compared to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
Major investors and Western officials have not left since Russia launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 24, 2022. Saudi Arabia is a special guest this year and will send a large business delegation.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine is only targeting “legitimate targets” related to Russia’s war efforts and indicated that Kyiv plans to escalate its long-range drone attacks. “It is time when we will be able to increase the level of our strikes,” he told reporters.
Strikes in St. Petersburg took place a day after Russia attacked Ukraine, killing 23 civilians and injuring 151 others, as Moscow followed through on threats to expand its military presence.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia’s deep strikes already had an “organized” nature.
Ukraine says it needs more air defense assistance
The protracted invasion of Ukraine is aimed at cutting off Russian oil production – a key source of financing for Moscow – and disrupting arms production. Kyiv has repeatedly targeted oil facilities in St. Petersburg and nearby ports.
But Ukraine lacks American-made Patriot air defense missiles, in part because the US stockpile has been depleted by the Iran war, leaving it vulnerable to Russian missiles.
Zelenskyy on Wednesday expressed frustration with his government officials, saying there was an agreement at the “highest political level” for the purchase of Patriot systems, but implementation was held up by financial, legal and technical considerations.
“The wait has taken too long,” he said on social media, demanding that officials open the purchase or there will be “serious personnel decisions.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned Ukrainians that Russian attacks may continue, a day after drone and missile attacks across the country killed at least 22 people and injured dozens.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who visited Kyiv on Wednesday to meet with Ukrainian officials, said that the movement of interceptor missiles from the US to Ukraine continues. The US is “doing everything it can” to continue supplying them despite limited production levels, he told a news conference.
Rutte also said that young Russians and their families are being “sold at a low price” by Moscow, such as the Russian military’s integration of soldiers with poor training and equipment and little chance of surviving wounds on the battlefield.
Ukraine also attacks a Russian military base
Another Ukrainian airstrike overnight damaged a Russian guided-missile corvette, the Boikiy, which was dry docked at the Kronstadt naval base, according to Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces. Kronstadt is an old base of the Russian Baltic Fleet located west of St.
Drones also hit a Russian manufacturing plant involved in the production of weapons in the Tambov region, which is 600 kilometers from Ukraine, Zelenskyy said.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that air forces shot down 354 Ukrainian planes overnight.
A man who lives in a tower block in Kyiv says he saw something flying towards his building before darkness fell after the explosion. The strike came as Russian drones and missiles hit the Ukrainian capital in a deadly wave of attacks.
In the Russian-controlled part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a Ukrainian strike hit a bus traveling from Moscow to the Crimean Peninsula, killing seven people and wounding 11, according to the Kremlin-appointed head of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin.
In the Smolensk region, two firefighters were killed by a Ukrainian drone attack, according to the regional governor, Vasily Anokhin. He said two other firefighters and a resident of the area were injured.
Meanwhile, Russia shot down 198 long-range drones in Ukraine last night, according to the Ukrainian Air Force, air defenses shot down 189.
Authorities in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy said that in the past 24 hours, one civilian was killed and 15 injured, including three children, as a result of Russian strikes.
In southern Kherson, Russian strikes killed an 86-year-old woman and wounded five others, according to regional authorities.
