Massive attack on Saint Petersburg: Russian authorities say they downed 127 drones, and the oil terminal is burning

Ukrainian forces carried out a massive overnight drone attack on Saint Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. According to reports, an oil terminal, a data centre and a bridge were hit. Russian state media confirmed the strikes on the terminal and on the data centre of the Russian social network VKontakte (VK).

The governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, said 127 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the region. Fires were reported, and debris from one drone damaged four cars in a car park. According to Ukrainian monitoring channels, the attack began at 2:50 a.m. local time. There is no independent confirmation of the targets or the extent of the damage so far.

Eyewitness footage shows drones in the sky and air defences in action over a city of 5.6 million people, 856 kilometres north of the Ukrainian border. Powerful explosions lit up the night, and one video caught the moment a drone hit an eight-lane bridge.

The terminal that has burned before

The oil terminal in the city's port is one of Russia's largest hubs for storing and exporting fuel, with an annual capacity of 12.5 million tonnes. Fuel arrives and leaves by river, rail and road. The terminal was already hit and damaged in a night attack on 4 July. Ukrainian drone maker Fire Point claims its FP-1 drone was used in the strike. Russian opposition outlet Astra also reports a hit substation, which knocked out power in the region and dropped water pressure, as well as a damaged residential building.

The strike comes after the complete failure of the energy truce that US President Donald Trump imposed unilaterally. How long can a truce last when it's declared by a third party, without the two sides doing the shooting agreeing to it?

The internet as a front line

The attack on VK is the latest in a series of strikes on Russian internet infrastructure: in recent weeks Ukrainian forces have hit several Yandex data centres. This is how President Volodymyr Zelensky is keeping his promise to answer Russian attacks on Ukrainian centres "in kind". While Moscow steps up attacks on Ukraine's civilian and energy infrastructure, Kyiv is striking ever deeper into Russia - in recent days massive drone attacks disrupted air traffic around Moscow and damaged data centres near the capital.

The war is no longer fought only over territory, but over electricity, fuel and servers. Each side targets what the other can't function without - and the first to feel it are the people in the apartment blocks, left without power and water.