Sunday night, over St Petersburg. Black smoke from the oil terminal. Governor Alexander Beglov spoke of fires at the St Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchyi depot. One dead. At least five injured, according to the BBC. The city’s air defence, The Irish Times reports, said nine injured. Two figures. The same night. Kyiv, the BBC writes, had not yet commented on the strikes on the city.

The Irish Times, on a Financial Times wire, calls it the city’s largest drone attack. Russia’s defence ministry said more than a thousand drones were shot down across the country overnight into Sunday. In the Moscow area, local authorities put 512. In St Petersburg, air defence claimed 146. These are Russian tallies. They are not Ukrainian communiqués about this target.

Beglov: 12 apartment blocks and two homes damaged. Pulkovo, temporarily closed. Mobile internet, possibly disrupted. VK confirmed a drone on its regional data centre; services, it said, “as usual”. Ozon confirmed a fire at a logistics warehouse, staff evacuated, no one injured there. Astra, cited by the Irish Times, wrote that parts of the city lost power for hours after a substation. Alina, 33, Nevsky district: explosions from 3am to 6am.

The terminal had last been hit in July. Ukraine, the BBC says, had paused its campaign on Russian refineries for three days after Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire”. It resumed. Zelensky counted, on Saturday, 76 Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy, oil and gas since the announcement. Trump wants quiet on the refineries, for a diesel arrangement with Moscow. Zelensky told him the arrangement feeds the war. That is the dispute. It stays on refineries and smoke.

The Irish Times ties the night to a harsher Washington-Kyiv relationship: Starlink slowed, sanctions delayed, Witkoff and Kushner on the phone. This article stays with the smoke and the terminal. Who launched the wave, with what real drone count, who died: the victims’ names are not public. Until a Ukrainian statement, there remain the governor, the ministry and the smoke.

Until an inquiry, two casualty figures remain. After an inquiry, the houses remain. Anyone who mixes them turns a port into a peace communiqué.

Image: Vyacheslav Argenberg, the Winter Palace and Palace Square at night, St Petersburg, 14 August 2007, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows the historic centre, not the oil terminal on 18 October 2026.

Sources consulted: Ukraine defies Trump by launching its largest-ever drone attack on St Petersburg — The Irish Times; Oil facilities hit in deadly overnight attack on St Petersburg — BBC News.