Ukraine drones hit St Petersburg gas terminal in Russia
An explosion at a major gas export terminal near the city of St Petersburg in Russia was carried out by Ukrainian drones, BBC News has been told.
The blast caused a large fire at the Ust-Luga terminal, but no injuries, Russian officials said.
An official source in Kyiv said the "special operation" of the SBU security service masterminded the attack, with drones that worked "on target".
Both Russia and Ukraine have used drones in the current conflict.
Russia launched its full-scale of invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, but has made little progress in recent months.
Regarding the explosion near St Petersburg, regional governor Alexander Drozdenko said a "high alert regime" was in place after the incident at the terminal of gas producer Novatek, in Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland. He shared a video of what appeared to be a large fire.
They’re hitting targets that far away? Good for them!
St Petersburg isn't that far from the border so it's not that surprising. I think they've probably been within weapons range since the beginning but Ukraine has held off on attacking them, but there's not much risk of escalation at this point (what Russia going to do), so why not right?
Is 1000km (621 Miles) not considered that far for a drone or am I misunderstanding something?
“Drone” is a wide term. Expand thinking from just off-the-shelf quadcopters and start thinking purpose designed long range remote planes.
The attack was supposedly carried out with the UKR Beaver, which is said to have a 1000km range.
Beaver drone info.
Article that the attack used a Beaver drone.
Depends. Don't try at home! Keep your drones in line of sight, which probably means much less than 1000km.
I don't know where you're measuring from with that. But if you look on the map St Petersburg is practically in Scandinavia.
Are Ukraine flying drones from other countries? I may be out of the loop but I figured they'd be flying them from their own territory only.
Edit: p.s. I was making a very rough estimate from Ukraine's closest border (I think)
They must be. Probably not officially but Finland's in NATO now so I doubt they'd really say anything also drains are incredibly hard to track so there's plausible deniability there
But you just have to look at a map of the world to realize this must be the case Moscow is closer to Ukraine than St Petersburg.
Anyway they don't even need to fly to any countries territory necessarily, they can come in over international waters, they just need to transport through other countries.
Even if they launched from Ukraine, attacking farther targets can be good strategically because it means Putin needs to deploy defenses to anything in range (including what might be in range if a better one is released tomorrow), instead of just the more attractive close targets.
That's one hell of a distance for a drone to fly from Ukraine.
They migrate north for the winter
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen drone?
It probably isn't hard to sneak in drones through Central Asia or the Baltic states into Russia proper. Then just drive them to the city where the target is and then agents inside Russia release the drone and drive back. Four hours later the FSB have the wreckage surrounded but the perpetrators are already halfway to the border. By the time the Russians realise they've been played, the people who did it are already celebrating their successful mission in a bar in Riga.
While that’s a quite exciting spy story, it appears the attacks were done with long range drones.
The attack was supposedly carried out with the UKR Beaver, which is said to have a 1000km range.
This model was already used in attacks in Russia in 2023, so it is not untested.
Beaver drone info.
Article that the attack used a Beaver drone.
Rīga's bar scene is amazing.
Or so I've been told.
Probably one of their military grade drones with fixed wings rather than the quadcopter DJI-esq variants they field inside their borders.
It is being reported to be a UKR Beaver, which is indeed a purpose built long range model.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Russia launched its full-scale of invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, but has made little progress in recent months.
Regarding Sunday's explosion near St Petersburg, regional governor Alexander Drozdenko said a "high alert regime" was in place after the incident at the terminal of gas producer Novatek, in Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland.
Russian news outlet Shot quoted local residents as saying they heard a drone followed by several explosions at Ust-Luga, close to Russia's border with Estonia.
Russia's defence ministry also said it shot down three Ukrainian drones in Smolensk Region, close to its border with Ukraine, on Saturday night.
On Thursday, Russia claimed to have captured a village close to the devastated city of Bakhmut, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region.
Ukraine has warned repeatedly that its army is facing severe ammunition shortages, but has set a target of producing a million drones domestically this year.
The original article contains 454 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 67%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!