Putin's home town on fire as major drone attack rains hell on city 'sparking blackout'

A massive drone attack has sparked huge fires in St Petersburg overnight, the town of Vladimir Putin . A Ukrainian attack struck an oil terminal and a data centre, amid reports the warehouse of a major online retailer and a bridge were also hit. Aleksandr Drozdenko, governor of Leningrad Oblast, claimed that 127 Ukrainian drones were shot down in the region, with debris from a drone damaging four cars in a parking lot and fires erupting.

St Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said fires broke out at the St Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot, and industrial warehouses in the Kolpinsky District. He claimed one person was killed and five more were injured.

He said: “Currently, emergency services are extinguishing fires at civilian infrastructure facilities in the Nevsky, Krasnoselsky, Krasnogvardeisky, and Moskovsky districts, as well as at the St Petersburg Oil Terminal. For safety reasons, operations at Pulkovo Airport have been restricted.”

The St Petersburg Oil Terminal is one of Russia 's largest fuel storage and export facilities, with a reported throughput of 12.5 million tons per year. Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack on this infrastructure facility, as well as for striking a data centre near St Petersburg operated by Russia's largest domestic social networking platform VKontakte.

The nearby 330-kilovolt Vostochnaya electrical substation was also targeted. Separate reports not confirmed by Ukraine claimed the Ozon retail logistics warehouse in St Petersburg was engulfed by flames after a drone attack.

The drone attack coincided with disruptions to VKontakte services and electricity outages in the Leningrad region. Footage shared on social media showed large fires and smoke rising into the sky of St Petersburg, located more than 530 miles north of the Ukrainian border.

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The attack on the VKontakte data centre comes days after Ukrainian drones struck Yandex data centres, in retaliation for a similar Russian attack on Ukrainian centres.

Russian pro-war channels were left fuming following the drone attack, with Telegram channel Pozdnyakov writing: “It's time to demand an absolutely devastating f*****g Oreshnik [hypersonic missile] strike on central Kyiv and western Ukraine to bring them to their senses…. The Ukrainians are certainly a reckless bunch."

The Ukrainian strikes come after Donald Trump announced on Truth Social on October 11 an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

Kyiv halted its attacks, but resumed them on Wednesday after claiming the deal was not being upheld by Moscow.

The US has piled pressure on Ukraine to halt strikes on oil refineries, claiming they are the cause of a global rise in the price of diesel fuel - which skyrocketed in the midst of the Strait of Hormuz crisis.