Two people have been killed and at least 17 injured as Russia and Ukraine continue to trade strikes on each other’s power infrastructure, after the breakdown of Donald Trump’s short-lived and unilaterally declared “energy ceasefire”. One person was killed and 15 wounded overnight after Ukraine used more than 1,000 drones to target Russian oil depots, logistics facilities and datacentres in one of its largest ever aerial bombardments. St Petersburg’s governor, Alexander Beglov, said on Sunday that fires had broken out overnight at the city’s oil terminal, an oil depot and industrial warehouses.
A logistics centre belonging to the Russian retailer Ozon and a datacentre for the local tech company VK were also targeted, both companies confirmed. Alexander Drozdenko, the governor of the Leningrad region that surrounds St Petersburg, said 145 drones had been shot down and about 20,000 people were without electricity after the raid. Meanwhile, local officials in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia said Russian strikes had killed a woman and wounded at least two other people, including a six-year-old girl.
Two apartment buildings, 18 cars and an educational institution had been damaged by the attack, according to Mykhailo Semikin, the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration. Tensions are deepening between Kyiv and Washington, with the US president criticising Ukraine for its strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, despite continued Russian aggression. Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” last week – which neither side said they agreed to beforehand – that quickly collapsed as Moscow continued its strikes on Ukraine’s power grid and Kyiv eventually resumed its hits on Russian oil refineries.
The Russian defence ministry said its air defence units had downed 1,015 Ukrainian drones around the country overnight. The Tass news agency quoted the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, who said Russia was responding with systematic, large-scale strikes. On Saturday, Russia said it had carried out a major overnight attack, targeting Ukraine’s largest steelworks in the city of Kryvyi Rih and vessels using the port of Odesa.
In a statement, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had also hit an electricity substation in the north-western city of Zhytomyr and another steel plant in Zaporizhzhia. In the Trump administration’s latest effort to reduce tensions with Russia, the US president announced on Friday that he would put a hold on a sweeping new sanctions package targeting the Russian economy, telling Congress the pause on the legislation passed by both chambers was in the national interest. Trump has yet to give details about what he has decided regarding further sanctions on Russia.
He also said that the previous night alone, energy facilities in four Ukrainian regions had been attacked and tens of thousands of families were still without power. He accused Russia of trying to cause a blackout. Thank you to everyone who understands this and helps,” he said.
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