Ukrainian drones hit St Petersburg oil terminal in latest long-range attack on Russia
While the bombardment of Kiev continues, Russian authorities launched an attack on St. Petersburg, Ukraine, on Saturday. He said he carried out a drone attack on an oil terminal in St. Petersburg. Russia’s oil infrastructure.
Almost daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities, fuel crisis and increased political pressure on the Kremlin. All-out invasion of Ukraine It is entering its fifth year.
Governor Alexander Beglov said the city’s Kirovsky district on the Baltic Sea coast was hit. He also said air defenses shot down 72 Ukrainian drones in Russia’s second largest city and the surrounding area.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as part of Ukraine’s “long-term sanctions” against Russia. Ukrainian forces in St. He said he also hit a military target on Kronstadt Island, just off the coast of St. Petersburg.
“Ukrainian defense forces hit port oil infrastructure that was making money for the Russian war, and there were also hits at Kronstadt, a key military target,” he said in a post on Telegram.
St. St. Petersburg’s Kirovsky district previously hosted Russia’s flagship St. Petersburg district in June. He was shot before the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, was particularly negatively affected by heavy attacks, causing local authorities to suspend gasoline sales to civilians. Governor Sergei Aksyonov, who was assigned to Moscow, said that one person was killed and two people, including a 10-year-old child, were injured in the attack in Ukraine on Saturday.
Ukraine attacks bring the war home
Russian President Vladimir Putin Shrugged shoulders to Ukraine’s strikes He insisted Russia’s energy facilities were “not critical” the war will continue until they reach their goals.
Although analysts said the advance of Russian forces was weak, they described the attacks on Russian energy as an effort by Ukraine to distract from battlefield losses. blocked in recent months.
On Friday, Putin visited the Russian military headquarters leading the war in Ukraine and received a report that the city of Kostyantynivka had been captured after weeks of intense street fighting. He praised it as an important step towards capturing the nearby cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key strongholds in the Donetsk region that remain in Ukrainian hands in the so-called “forest belt” of heavily fortified cities.
Wearing military fatigues, Putin said in televised comments that the capture of Kostyantynivka, a major transport and industrial center, was of “great strategic importance”.
Ukrainian troops were pushed back several kilometers (miles) and fighting took place on the outskirts of the nearby town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, Colonel General Sergei Rudskoy, First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, said in a briefing on Saturday.
“The city is now under our full control. Units of Army Group South are completing the clearing of blocks in the city, destroying small groups and individual Ukrainian fighters still hiding in basements and ruins,” he said.
Zelenskyy denied that Russia had taken control of the city. “This is just another Russian lie, an attempt to fabricate some kind of news,” he wrote on social media on Saturday. “If Kostiantynivka were under Russian control, perhaps Putin would have no problem meeting me there to find a diplomatic way to end this war. But the truth is that he will not cross the front line; the reality is very different from Putin’s words.”
Zelenskyy’s post also seemed to attract the attention of US President Donald Trump. “Now, on the eve of America’s Independence Day, Putin has chosen to lie to the world and the President of the United States about the situation at the front.”
Putin appears to believe his government can prevent the fuel crisis from eroding his authority and support for the war he launched more than four years ago. At least attacks brought the war home Even more poignant for millions of Russians, this situation shatters Putin’s narrative that the conflict is something that does not affect the lives of ordinary people in his country.
According to local media reports, the border city of Belgorod, which Ukraine has repeatedly targeted with unmanned aerial vehicles, was left almost completely without electricity on Saturday due to night attacks.
Meanwhile, local officials said on Saturday that eight people, including two children, were injured as a result of a Russian attack on residences in the Zaporizhia region in Ukraine’s southeastern region.
___
You can follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
