Fires burned at two oil facilities in Saint Petersburg after a Ukrainian drone attack on 18 October 2026, killing at least one person and injuring five others, according to the city’s governor, Alexandre Beglov. Saint Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin’s hometown.
Beglov said firefighters were fighting blazes at the Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchi oil depot and industrial warehouses in the Kolpino district south of the city. Several residential buildings and two houses were also hit.
Kyiv launched more than 1,000 drones at Russia in one of its largest aerial attacks of the war, striking the city’s oil infrastructure.
Saint Petersburg’s main airport, one of Russia’s busiest, restricted operations for safety, disrupting flights. A fire broke out at Ozon’s logistics hub, while drones attacked internet company VK’s data centre in the Leningrad region.
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Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region, said 145 drones had been shot down and approximately 20,000 people had lost electricity after the raid.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said 1,015 Ukrainian drones had been neutralised overnight across 15 Russian regions, Crimea and the Black Sea. State-run news agency TASS described it as the largest attack on the region since the war began in February 2022.
The attack followed the swift breakdown of an arrangement announced by President Donald Trump on 11 October. Trump said Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire” in the 4½-year-old war, intended to halt attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.
Trump also signed an executive order on Friday waiving planned restrictions on Russia, citing US national interests. He told reporters he did not know what he would decide on further sanctions against Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces had struck Ukraine’s energy, oil and gas facilities 76 times since Trump’s announcement. He told the Financial Times that Kyiv was done with the energy ceasefire and would resume strikes on Russia in retaliation.
Trump has expressed anger at Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, saying they are contributing to a surge in global fuel prices. Kyiv says its strikes are fair retribution for years of Russia’s offensive and destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
Zelenskyy said US-Ukraine intelligence sharing had resumed after being “blocked for some period of time”. He also said waiving sanctions against Russia would strengthen Putin’s war effort.
Russian forces struck energy facilities in four Ukrainian regions overnight on 18 October, leaving tens of thousands of families without power. Zelenskyy said strikes on residential buildings killed two people and injured 12, including two children.
Over the past week, Russia has attacked Ukraine with almost 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles, most of them ballistic, Zelenskyy said.
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