St. Petersburg burns as 221 drones hit Russia's biggest oil hub, $400M lost
Flames and smoke over the Gulf of Finland have turned Russia's main Baltic oil gateway into a battlefield, as a wave of 221 drones ripped through air defenses and set critical fuel infrastructure ablaze. The strikes around St. Petersburg and its satellite ports have inflicted losses that Russian officials and independent analysts alike estimate in the hundreds of millions of dollars, with some assessments putting the damage near 400 million. I see this as a pivotal moment in the drone war, where relatively cheap uncrewed systems are now reshaping the strategic map of Europe's energy flows in real time.
The assault on Primorsk, Kirishi and nearby terminals is not an isolated incident but the culmination of a campaign that has already destroyed a $150 million fuel hub, shut entire refineries and forced Russia to divert air traffic and shipping. By hitting the country's biggest oil export hub near St. Petersburg, Ukrainian planners have signaled that no node in Russia's energy network is beyond reach, and that the economic cost of the invasion will increasingly be measured in burning tank farms and stranded tankers.
St. Petersburg's oil lifeline under fire
St. Petersburg has long been more than a cultural capital, it is the northern outlet for Russia's oil exports to Europe and beyond, anchored by the sprawling Primorsk Port complex on the Baltic Sea. Crude and refined products move from inland refineries through pipelines and rail lines to this icy coastline, where tankers load cargoes that underpin both the federal budget and the war machine. When that lifeline comes under sustained drone attack, as it has in the latest barrage, the impact is not just local, it reverberates through Russia's fiscal planning and its ability to keep fuel flowing to the front.
The wider St. Petersburg region is also ringed by industrial towns such as Tosno, where smoke was seen rising over buildings after earlier strikes on fuel facilities. Those satellite communities host storage depots, rail junctions and smaller terminals that feed into the main export arteries, creating a dense web of targets for Ukrainian planners. By concentrating attacks on this northern cluster, Kyiv is not only trying to disrupt exports but also to force Russia to redeploy scarce air defense assets away from the front lines and deeper into its own territory.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/st-petersburg-burns-as-221-drones-hit-russia-s-biggest-oil-hub-400m-lost/ar-AA1T1WGp
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