Фото: t.me/astrapress
St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region came under a large-scale drone attack overnight on July 4, Russian regional authorities said. At the same time, air defense systems were repelling an attack on the Belgorod region, where local authorities said Ukrainian forces had carried out a missile strike.
St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov said on his Telegram channel in the morning that the city had been targeted by drones. He urged residents to stay at home until the threat was over and warned of possible disruptions to mobile internet services. He later said that air defense systems had repelled the attack and that the strike had hit the territory of an oil terminal in the city’s Kirovsky district. According to him, the consequences of the incident had been eliminated and there were no casualties. Beglov also said that 72 drones had been shot down over the city, with one of them falling in Peterhof. He said there were no casualties or damage.
As reported by Astra, the target of the attack was the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, located near the Big Port of St. Petersburg and used for handling crude oil and petroleum products. According to the project’s analysts, one of the videos from the scene shows that it was not a storage tank but a railway tank car on the access tracks that caught fire. At the time of publication, the number of fire hotspots was increasing.
Leningrad Region Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko announced that the air raid alert in the region had been lifted. According to him, 72 drones were also shot down over the region while repelling the attack, and there were no reports of casualties or damage.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that between 8:00 p.m. Moscow time on July 3 and 7:00 a.m. on July 4, air defense systems intercepted and destroyed 389 Ukrainian fixed-wing drones over the Belgorod, Bryansk, Vladimir, Kaluga, Kursk, Lipetsk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Saratov, Smolensk, Tver and Tula regions, Krasnodar Territory, the Moscow region, Crimea, as well as over the waters of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
The attack also affected operations at Pulkovo Airport. According to Fontanka, as of 9:24 a.m., 41 flights had been delayed by more than two hours and 10 departing flights had been canceled.
Acting Belgorod Region Governor Alexander Shuvaev also said that Belgorod and the surrounding Belgorod district had again come under heavy attack by Ukrainian forces. According to him, there were no casualties based on preliminary information, but damage to infrastructure had caused disruptions to electricity and water supplies in the city. He also reported fires at several infrastructure facilities, where firefighting crews had been dispatched, as well as damage to the facade and windows of a commercial building and six vehicles.
Belgorod Mayor Valentin Demidov confirmed the strike and the damage, adding that city authorities were conducting inspections to document losses and assist residents, while emergency crews were working to deal with the aftermath. The full extent of the damage is still being assessed.