Drone attack hits St Petersburg oil sites, kills one

A drone attack on St Petersburg killed at least one person, injured five and set fires at two oil facilities overnight into Sunday, Russian officials said, as Ukraine accused Moscow of continuing to strike its energy infrastructure despite a proposed ceasefire.

St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said firefighters were battling blazes at the St Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchyi oil depot. Al Jazeera reported that industrial warehouses in the Kolpino district were also burning. Beglov said 12 apartment buildings and two houses were damaged, while the city’s Pulkovo Airport temporarily restricted operations for safety reasons. He warned that mobile internet service could be disrupted.

Russian e-commerce company Ozon said a drone struck its logistics centre, starting a fire. Staff were evacuated and no one was injured there, the company said. VK, a Russian social network, said a drone targeted its regional data centre but that its services remained available “as usual” after users reported outages.

Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding Leningrad region, said 145 drones had been shot down and about 20,000 people were without electricity, according to Al Jazeera. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had neutralised 1,015 Ukrainian drones overnight. The state-run news agency TASS called it the largest attack on the region in four years, Al Jazeera reported. Kyiv had not commented on the St Petersburg strikes.

In Ukraine, Russian strikes on residential buildings overnight killed two people and injured 12, including two children, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday, according to Al Jazeera. He also reported a strike on an agricultural enterprise in Volyn.

The attacks came amid a dispute over an “energy ceasefire” announced last week by U.S. President Donald Trump. Zelensky said Russia had struck Ukraine’s energy and oil and gas sectors 76 times since the announcement. He said substations in the Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Khmelnytskyi and Odesa regions were hit overnight, and tens of thousands of families remained without power.

“America should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements,” Zelensky said. He said Russia had launched nearly 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles at Ukraine over the past week, with energy facilities among the main targets.

Ukraine paused strikes on Russian oil facilities for three days after Trump’s announcement, then resumed them while accusing Russia of continuing its attacks, the BBC reported. Kyiv says its strikes on oil sites are intended to limit a main source of revenue for Moscow’s war effort. Zelensky told the Financial Times that Ukraine was “done” with the proposed energy ceasefire, Al Jazeera reported.

Trump has criticised the renewed Ukrainian strikes. His decision to suspend some sanctions on Russia has also drawn criticism. The BBC reported that Washington and Kyiv have clashed over a U.S. deal to import Russian diesel, which Trump sought to lower American energy prices; Zelensky suggested the deal would amount to investing in Russia’s war effort.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Saturday that a 60-day waiver would allow the administration to “analyse” the effects of sanctions and tariffs on the U.S. and global economies, Al Jazeera reported. Trump defended the decision, saying it would be “good for the country, and I think good for the world.”