Ukraine hits a St. Petersburg oil terminal in a raid Russia says involved more than 1,000 drones

Ukraine launched a large drone attack on Sunday. Russia's Defense Ministry said it neutralized 1,015 Ukrainian drones over 15 regions, Crimea and the Black Sea. In St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city, black smoke rose over industrial and logistics sites, and Russian officials said 126 drones were intercepted over the surrounding region. Leningrad regional governor Alexander Drozdenko gave a higher figure of 145, and said about 20,000 people lost power.

St. Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov said firefighters were fighting fires at the city's oil terminal, the Ruchi oil depot and warehouses in the Kolpinsky district. The online retailer Ozon reported a fire at its logistics hub, and the internet company VK said drones hit its data center in the Leningrad region. Pulkovo airport restricted operations. The Moscow Times reported one person killed and five injured in the city.

Russia kept up its own strikes. A Russian ballistic missile attack on Kyiv killed one person and injured three, according to Ukrinform. Zelensky said the United States is delaying Patriot missiles already paid for under the NATO-run Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), at a time when Russia is intensifying attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Earlier this year, a NATO official denied that a Patriot shortage was linked to payment delays, so the cause of the current delay is disputed.

Figures from both sides about wartime damage and interception rates are among the least reliable claims available. The two Russian counts for one region already differ. The targets themselves are not in dispute: a Baltic export terminal for petroleum products, a fuel depot, an e-commerce logistics hub and a data center, all hundreds of kilometers from the front.