Smoke rises over St. Petersburg following a previous wave of Ukrainian drone strikes earlier this week.Reuters
Quick Summary
--Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on St. Petersburg after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected peace talks.
--The attacks hit Russian naval arsenals and a naval base in Kronstadt, causing infrastructure damage and injuries.
--Russia claimed it downed 376 Ukrainian drones, while Ukraine said it downed 249 of 272 Russian drones.
--This summary was generated with AI and reviewed by an editor.
Ukraine launched a mass drone attack on St. Petersburg a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech there rejecting a call for peace from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The attacks hit Russian naval arsenals and a naval base in the town of Kronstadt just west of St. Petersburg, Zelensky said in a statement on social media.
Russian officials said the attacks damaged infrastructure, without giving more details, and caused injuries but no deaths.
“It is time to end this war. But Russia’s ruler wants to keep fighting,” Zelensky said in his statement. “Russia must end its war and stop its attacks on life. Any manifestation of injustice against Ukraine will receive a just response. I thank our warriors for their precision.”
The raids came hours after Putin’s speech at an economic forum in which he rejected Zelensky’s call for face-to-face peace talks published in an open letter late Thursday. Instead, Putin called on Russian soldiers to keep fighting.
Zelensky, whose military has shifted the momentum against Russia in recent weeks, said in his nightly address late Friday that “the Russian side again chooses war.”
“He simply does not want to end the war,” Zelensky said of Putin.
Early Saturday morning, Ukraine launched hundreds of drones against Russia. Smoke rose from sites around St. Petersburg as the economic forum continued. Russia briefly closed maritime access to the town of Kronstadt, where the naval base is located, according to Russian state media.
Smoke rises from a ship hit by a Ukrainian drone strike earlier this week, in Kronstadt, Russia.Vantor/Handout/Reuters
The raids were the second time Ukraine has targeted St. Petersburg in recent days. On Wednesday, Ukrainian drones struck within miles of the economic forum on its opening day.
Attacks on other Russian cities overnight caused damage to other infrastructure, including an oil-storage facility near the southwestern city of Krasnodar.
Russia said it had downed 376 Ukrainian drones overnight, without saying how many got through.
Russia, meanwhile, launched 272 long-range attack drones against Ukraine overnight, of which 249 were downed, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The fresh Ukrainian attacks came as Kyiv has turned the tide in the four-year war, halting Russian advances on many parts of the front and inflicting heavy losses. Long-range attacks with drones have damaged Russia’s military production facilities and its critical oil industry.
James Marson leads Ukraine coverage for The Wall Street Journal. He has covered Ukraine for 15 years, chronicling its efforts to establish itself as an independent European democracy through a revolution and a war with Russia.
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