St Petersburg oil terminal burns in claimed 135-drone attack

Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko raised the count to 135 drones destroyed over the region overnight, said a woman and three children were hospitalised after debris set a house on fire, and said about 20,000 people in Yanino were without power after two substations shut down.

Why it matters: St Petersburg is Russia's second city and its oil terminal is a major Baltic export outlet, so a claimed attack wave on this scale, reaching the terminal, a VK data centre and housing in the surrounding region, marks a step up from the drone waves reported over the region earlier on Saturday.

Data as of Saturday, October 17, 2026, 23:44 ET. Developing item. Via Interfax, in Russian, read in full: the 126-drone count is Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko's, the oil terminal and district fires are St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov's statement, and the data centre account is VK's own statement. Russia is a party to the war and no independent source in the reporting opened corroborates the counts or the damage, hence grade C. Updated Sunday, October 18, 2026, 01:41 ET: the 135 count, the hospitalisations, the 55 damaged cars and the Yanino power outage are Governor Drozdenko's figures, reported by Interfax, in Russian, read in full; they are a Russian official account from a party to the war, with no independent corroboration in the reporting opened.

Latest (Sunday 01:41 ET): Governor Alexander Drozdenko raised the overnight count to 135 drones destroyed over Leningrad region. He said debris fell on an apartment building in Gatchina, 55 parked cars were damaged in Novoselye, and in Vsevolozhsk district debris set a residential house on fire and a woman and three children were hospitalised with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning. He said two transformer substations in Yanino remained shut down in an emergency outage, leaving 50 apartment buildings and about 20,000 people without electricity.

Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko said air defences destroyed 126 drones over the region in a wave that continued into Sunday morning, Moscow time, after an earlier count of 95, with debris falling on residential houses and power lines. St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said drones attacked the St Petersburg Oil Terminal and civilian infrastructure objects, and that emergency crews were putting out fires in the Nevsky, Krasnoselsky, Krasnogvardeisky and Moskovsky districts and at the terminal, with Pulkovo airport operations restricted for safety and no fatalities. VK said its data centre in Leningrad region was attacked and that its services remained available to users as normal.

St Petersburg oil terminal burns in claimed 135-drone attack

Sources