Yesterday, Ukraine carried out one of its largest attacks ever on St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. Over 1,000 drones were involved. Here's a map showing some of the major targets that were hit.
🚨 Ukrainian drones launched a mass overnight attack on St. Petersburg and Russia’s Leningrad region. ▪️ St. Petersburg Oil Terminal: A major Baltic petroleum export hub handling up to 12.5 million tonnes annually. ▪️ Ruchyi fuel depot: Stores and distributes gasoline and diesel, with around 74,000 cubic meters of storage capacity. ▪️ Ship Fairway Bridge: Part of the Western High-Speed Diameter highway linking northern and southern St. Petersburg. ▪️ Ozon warehouse: A logistics hub for one of Russia’s largest online retailers. ▪️ VK data center: Server infrastructure in Novosergiyevka belonging to the group behind VKontakte and Max.
— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 18, 2026
Some more detail on the targeted sites.
ASTRA’s OSINT analyst geolocated footage of a fire at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, located at 32 Elevatorsky Proezd in the southwestern part of the city.
According to the company’s website, the facility is one of the largest terminals for handling liquid bulk cargo in the Baltic region. It has 21 storage tanks for petroleum products and an annual handling capacity of 12.5 million tonnes, making it an important part of russia’s oil logistics infrastructure.
ASTRA also reported damage to the Ruchi oil depot, which the outlet described as St. Petersburg’s largest oil terminal. The extent of the damage to either facility has not been independently established.
So there were two separate oil sites attacked on different sides of the city. This video is definitely of the oil depot.
САНКТ-ПЕТЕРБУРГ ЗАЗНАВ МАСОВАНОЇ АТАКИ БЕЗПІЛОТНИКІВ Cпалахнула нафтобаза «Руч’ї» — великий паливний об’єкт, де зберігають бензин і дизельне пальне. Також повідомляють про удари по нафтовому терміналу, дата-центру та перебої з електропостачанням. #СанктПетербург #Нафтобаза #АтакаДронів #росія #НовиниУкраїни
— ТЕЗА (@Teza_inc) October 18, 2026
And this video is of the oil terminal.
Residents of St Petersburg enjoying the burning oil terminal in St Petersburg, Russia. https://t.co/8iP2FqRshf
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) July 4, 2026
Pretty sure this is also the oil terminal.
Ukrainian drones launched a massive overnight attack on St. Petersburg on October 18, reportedly striking an oil terminal, a VKontakte data center, a power substation and a bridge. Fires, power outages and water supply disruptions were reported. https://t.co/g0gzssvoS6
— Clash Report (@clashreport) October 18, 2026
This video is either from the oil terminal or the oil depot. I'm not sure which.
At least one person was killed and 15 injured after Ukrainian drones struck oil facilities, logistics and data centers in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region https://t.co/6ebQ2N4rSG https://t.co/Zv9GCkucnq
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 18, 2026
Also hit the same night was an Ozon warehouse. Ozon is the second largest online retailer in Russia after Wildberries.
Russia’s St. Petersburg Ozon e-commerce distribution center continued to burn out of control today after an overnight Ukrainian drone strike. https://t.co/gjxu1iyxDV
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 18, 2026
They may have managed to save some of it but it's not clear yet.
Helicopters are trying to put out the fire at Ozon warehouse in St. Petersburg. Will Putin be shown any of this footage of his "3-day SMO"? Or will he continue hearing the lying reports of Gerasimov? Putin started this war, and Putin brought it back to his hometown. https://t.co/9EF4BhrB61
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) October 18, 2026
Also hit was a big data center.
Pavel Durov reacted to the explosion at a data center near St. Petersburg with a 🥲 emoji The founder of Telegram said he had built the data center himself 15 years ago and sold it to VK three years later. “You can tell it was built to last — the walls are thick. But they couldn't protect it,” wrote the founder of Telegram and VKontakte.
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 18, 2026
The data center strike definitely had an impact.
⚠️ Confirmed: Russian social media network VK (VKontakte) is currently experiencing a major disruption, with metrics showing connectivity at 56% of ordinary levels. The incident comes amid reports of a Ukrainian drone attack in the vicinity of its St. Petersburg data center https://t.co/XOSxL0X7CK
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) October 18, 2026
Finally, here's the attack on a major bridge in St. Petersburg. It's still standing, but someone will probably have to inspect and repair the damage before it reopens.
🇺🇦🇷🇺 Un pont a été ciblé à Saint-Pétersbourg. Enfin une réponse proportionnée aux attaques répétées contre les ponts à Kyiv. J'espère que ce n'est qu'un début. https://t.co/KLNpz4SBRj
— Antoine 🇫🇷 (@thetoitoi) October 18, 2026
Meanwhile, Russia attacked a park in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. Six people were killed including a little girl in a stroller. I'll spare you those images.
Obviously, the ceasefire President Trump announced last week is not being observed any longer. (It was never being observed by Russia.) Trump is clearly upset about it.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Mr. Trump criticized Zelenskyy for targeting Russian diesel refineries and said, "he doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did."
"He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now. His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead," Mr. Trump wrote.
The obvious problem here is that Trump is only applying pressure on one side of the war. He's actually offering Russia relief at the same time.
Mr. Trump said Sunday that he had decided to hold off on implementing new sanctions against Russia because he doesn't "want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table."
Who knows what Russia is saying behind the scenes but in public they are saying they have no interest in ending the war. And their actions seem to show the same thing.
Palmer Luckey argued that the diesel deal with Russia really won't make much of a difference compared to the amount of money Europe has been sending Putin.
I hate qualifying arguments like this, but - everyone knows I am about as pro-Ukraine/anti-Russian as it gets. That regularly leads to friction between me and other Republicans, even ones who otherwise align 99%. With that said, whining from Europeans and the American left about America buying $1B in diesel fuel from Russia is so out of touch with reality. The EU has spent over $200B on Russian fuel and is on-track to buy hundreds of billions more. Most of that was purchased by wealthy EU members who can absolutely afford alternatives. https://t.co/qwbML7tnHB
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) October 19, 2026
I hate qualifying arguments like this, but - everyone knows I am about as pro-Ukraine/anti-Russian as it gets. That regularly leads to friction between me and other Republicans, even ones who otherwise align 99%.
With that said, whining from Europeans and the American left about America buying $1B in diesel fuel from Russia is so out of touch with reality. The EU has spent over $200B on Russian fuel and is on-track to buy hundreds of billions more. Most of that was purchased by wealthy EU members who can absolutely afford alternatives.
That seems like a fair point, but it doesn't explain calling on Ukraine to stop the most effective attacks it has made all year (the refinery strikes) and then meddling with their Starshield access to try to force them to comply. That's clearly going to benefit Russia a lot more than it benefits the United States. I don't see how relieving the pressure on Putin helps bring him to the table to end the war. On the contrary, Putin would definitely see that as a big win and would have an excuse to fight on.
President Trump seems to see something else in Putin, a reasonable leader willing to make peace if only Ukraine would let him. I just don't see anything like that, not in the past and not now.