{"id":452,"date":"2026-06-03T09:55:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T09:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/452\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T09:55:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T09:55:08","slug":"ukraine-drones-hit-st-petersburg-while-nato-chief-makes-unannounced-kyiv-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/452\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine drones hit St Petersburg, while NATO chief makes unannounced Kyiv visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine has struck an oil export terminal in St Petersburg hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual economic forum got underway.<\/p>\n

The attack on St Petersburg, Putin’s home city, and the location of Davos \u2014 a showcase economic forum designed to attract foreign investment \u2014 comes as both sides dial up strikes on each other in the more than four-year-old war.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Plumes<\/p>\n

Smoke shrouds the golden dome of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in St Petersburg, Russia. (AP Photo)<\/p>\n

A plume of smoke was visible from the historic city centre where an oil export terminal had been hit, and Reuters correspondents reported hearing loud explosions on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed his drones struck the fuel terminal and said they had also targeted a military facility near what is Russia’s second-largest city.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Banners advertise the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) at the forum’s venue. (AFP)<\/p>\n

Alexander Beglov, the governor of St Petersburg, said that unspecified “infrastructure objects” had been hit in three different districts of the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the wider Leningrad region, said air defences had shot down 59 drones overnight.<\/p>\n

Ukraine war reaches ‘a new phase’, where Kyiv has the advantage<\/a><\/p>\n

Ukraine has developed AI-enabled drones capable of making precision strikes from hundreds of kilometres away, and it means using Russia’s vital logistics routes has become a dangerous “lottery”.<\/p>\n

The city’s Pulkovo airport had to temporarily restrict flights, Russia’s aviation watchdog said, and more than 30 flights were delayed or cancelled.<\/p>\n

Given the importance of the event to Moscow, the Ukrainian attack is likely to raise questions inside Russia about how effective its own air defence capabilities are, a problem that Ukraine is also grappling with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The location of the economic forum itself was heavily protected, however, and there was no suggestion that Ukrainian drones had gotten close to the venue.<\/p>\n

NATO chief’s surprise Kyiv visit<\/p>\n

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday, local time, for an unannounced trip, after a series of large-scale fatal Russian attacks on the Ukrainian capital.<\/p>\n

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is expected to meet with Rutte, has been appealing to members of the defence bloc for help protecting Ukraine from Russian ballistic missile attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"NATO<\/p>\n

Mark Rutte during a joint news conference with Volodymyr Zelenskyy during an earlier visit in February. File image. (AP Photo: Sergei Grits)<\/p>\n

The visit was announced by Ukraine’s national railway operator on the social media platform Telegram.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Today at the Kyiv railway station, we are gladly welcoming NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte,” Ukrzaliznytsia wrote alongside images of the NATO chief on the platform.<\/p>\n

“This visit is extremely important, just like all the previous ones, because it is a gesture of solidarity and support from the Alliance for our country.”<\/p>\n

The post was later deleted after the photos were widely circulated.<\/p>\n

The visit comes after, earlier this week, Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles<\/a> against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing at least 22 civilians and wounding 138 others.<\/p>\n

Putin has escalated Moscow’s aerial campaign in recent weeks in an apparent bid to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of US-made air defence systems and persuade an increasingly pessimistic audience at home that Moscow is prevailing in the four-year-old war.<\/p>\n

Reuters \/ AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine has struck an oil export terminal in St Petersburg hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual economic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[364,365,358,7,20,362,361,363,71,130],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-attack","tag-davos","tag-kyiv","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-saint-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg","tag-strikes","tag-ukraine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}