Ukraine targets Russian navy base near St. Petersburg on last day of ‘Putin’s Davos’
By Tim Lister, Daria Tarasova-Markina and Luke Unger
(CNN) — Ukraine launched extensive drone attacks against Russian refineries and military facilities early on Saturday, including several in the St. Petersburg area, where the final day of a Kremlin-sponsored international forum was taking place.
Targets included naval facilities, as well as oil depots and terminals, the Ukrainian military said.
It’s the second time in the past few days that scores of Ukrainian drones have targeted the Leningrad region. Russia said it downed about 60 over the region early on Wednesday, hours before the start of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – often dubbed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s version of Davos.
“Last night, our drones covered a distance of about 1,000 kilometers to the St. Petersburg region – to the enemy navy’s arsenals and a base in Kronstadt,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday.
Kronstadt is the main base, repair and supply hub for Russia’s navy in the eastern Baltic and also has a naval academy. A Russian warship in dock there was struck by a Ukrainian drone on Wednesday.
The town of Kronstadt was closed to traffic for several hours Saturday, according to the official news agency TASS.
“St. Petersburg came under a large-scale attack by military drones,” the city’s governor, Aleksandr Beglov, posted on Telegram on Saturday, saying three people had been injured.
“I ask the people of St. Petersburg to stay at home and not go out onto the streets. Mobile internet services may be disrupted,” Beglov said on Telegram.
Around St. Petersburg, “a total of 141 UAVs have been shot down over the Leningrad Region,” said Aleksandr Drozdenko, the regional governor, reporting debris in several areas.
Drozdenko said efforts continued to extinguish a fire in a village called Bolshaya Izhora, where more than 600 people had been evacuated. CNN geolocated video of thick plumes of smoke rising from a location in the area, which houses a Russian naval arsenal.
Zelensky also said that Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions also reached about 500 kilometers into the Krasnodar region – and hit an oil depot,” posting videos of large fires in both Krasnodar, in southern Russia, and Kronstadt.
“At least three tanks containing petroleum products are engulfed in flames,” claimed Ukraine’s security service (SBU). “This oil depot is a vital rear-area hub for the storage and supply of fuel to Russian troops in the southern and eastern sectors.”
The strikes came two days after Zelensky sent an open letter to Putin, urging him to end the countries’ four-year war, as the Russian leader was preparing to address the forum. Putin responded with dismissiveness, calling the letter “rude” and voicing skepticism about Zelensky’s true intentions. The Ukrainian president can “come to Moscow” if he wants to talk, a Kremlin spokesperson said.
Ukraine appears currently to have the upper hand in some areas along the front lines of the war.
The timing of Zelensky’s letter – in the middle of the event where Russian billionaires schmooze with political leaders and decision makers – was seen as no coincidence. The Russian economy is struggling and Zelensky is hoping he can capitalize on rising disquiet among business elites.
Fuel supplies squeezed
Russian emergency services acknowledged Saturday that a fire had broken out at the oil depot in Krasnodar. They said dozens of people had been evacuated and more than 50 pieces of fire-fighting equipment were deployed to combat the fire.
Some 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) away, regional authorities reported a fire at the Tyumen oil refinery in the Urals.
“The fire broke out in one of the purification units as a result of a technical malfunction,” the authorities said. “Reports that the fire was caused by a drone attack are untrue.”
Kyiv has stepped up attacks on key Russian oil infrastructure in recent months, firing hundreds of long-range drones, squeezing fuel supplies and compounding the economic strain on residents.
Both sides regularly launch hundreds of drones at each other’s territory at night but Ukrainian long-range drones have become increasingly effective in targeting Russian energy facilities, military bases and factories.
The Ukrainian military said Russia had launched 272 drones overnight Friday into Saturday, of which 249 were intercepted. There were impacts at 11 locations, the air force said.
The-CNN-Wire
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