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Ukraine Strikes St. Petersburg with Drones, Damaging Oil Terminal and Data Center
· Confirmed
In Short: Ukrainian forces launched a massive drone attack on St. Petersburg, damaging an oil terminal and a data center, among other targets.
Ukrainian forces launched a large-scale drone attack on St. Petersburg, Russia, targeting multiple critical infrastructure sites, including the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal and a VKontakte data center, according to reports from the Kyiv Post and Defense Express.
The attack on the oil terminal, which has an annual capacity of 12.5 million metric tons, caused a fire at the facility, while the data center disruptions led to outages on social networks and left 20,000 people without power, as reported by the Kyiv Post and Rferl.
The drone strike also damaged a bridge spanning the Korabelny fairway in St. Petersburg, located about 4.5 kilometers from the oil terminal. The 620-meter-long bridge connects Bely and Vasilyevsky islands and has eight traffic lanes, according to The New Voice of Ukraine.
The attack disrupted flights at St. Petersburg’s main airport for safety reasons, and Russian officials reported that air defenses destroyed 1,110 Ukrainian drones across Russia, Crimea, and the Black Sea, as per Cbsaustin. Russia’s defense ministry stated that 1,015 Ukrainian drones were neutralized overnight, according to NewsCord.
The Ukrainian strikes on the data centers coincided with a significant drop in automated traffic from Yandex’s network to roughly 0.4 percent of its recent peak, according to data from Cloudflare Radar, a public tool that tracks global Internet activity, as reported by Rferl.
The attack on the data center caused major disruptions to VKontakte, one of Russia’s largest social networks, and affected Ozon, Russia’s equivalent of Amazon, as reported by the BBC and Kyivindependent.
The attack also damaged a logistics warehouse and a highway bridge across St. Petersburg, according to the Kyiv Post. Fires were being extinguished at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchyi oil depot following the attack, which injured at least five people, as reported by the BBC and Kyivindependent.
The drone attack on St. Petersburg is part of a broader pattern of Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure, including oil refineries, airfields, and ammunition depots, as reported by Newsukraine.
Background
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What's confirmed
- The region's Governor Alexander Beglov said fires were being extinguished at the St Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchyi oil depot following the attack, which also injured at least five.
- On October 18, Ukrainian FP-1 drones struck several russian oil and digital infrastructure facilities in and around St. Petersburg, according to Ukrainian defense company Fire Point.
What's still developing
- Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin described Zelenskyy’s open letter proposing the meeting as “boorish,” particularly after a May 22 drone attack on a college dormitory in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region that Moscow said killed 21 and wounded scores of others.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's recent attacks on data centers of Russian tech giant Yandex have lowered the number of Internet bots promoting pro-Kremlin hate, a claim that has been disputed by many technology researchers.
- While Ukrainian officials say they have so far respected Trump's call for an energy ceasefire, they did strike large data centers inside Russia operated by Yandex, a company often described as Russia's version of Google.
- Ukraine's drones struck the Samara hub, the largest oil storage facility in Europe, according to the Unmanned Systems Forces' (SBS) Telegram channel.
- Thursday, September 24, 2026 · 1:05 PM ET In Short: Ukrainian forces struck two Russian radar stations, a drone launch facility, and a fuel depot in occupied territories, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
- Ukrainian forces struck two Russian radar stations, a facility used to store and launch attack drones near Donetsk, and a fuel depot in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, the General Staff said.
- Russia attacked a production facility of the Textile-Kontakt group of companies. (Photo: Facebook Oleksandr Sokolovskyi) A Russian ballistic missile struck the main production facility and logistics warehouse of Ukrainian textile manufacturer TK-Domashniy Tekstyl in Kyiv overnight on Sept. 24, causing extensive damage, Textile-Kontakt Group founder Oleksandr Sokolovskyi said.
- St Petersburg's governor said 12 apartment buildings and two homes were damaged in the attacks on the city, while Pulkovo Airport was temporarily closed.
- The St Petersburg Oil Terminal was among targets hit in the city overnight At least one person has been killed in an overnight attack on St Petersburg that successfully targeted two of the city's oil facilities.
- Social network VK confirmed a drone had targeted its regional data centre, but stressed its services were available "as usual" after users reported outages in the early hours of the morning.
- Ukraine has struck St Petersburg before, though regions closer to Ukraine are threatened more often.
- The extent of the damage to the facility was not immediately clear. russia claims more than 1,000 drones intercepted nationwide. russian officials reported the drones were intercepted over the Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, and Pskov regions, the Moscow region, Krasnodar Krai, occupied Crimea, and the Black Sea.