Ukraine hit a Russian military base and other targets near St. Petersburg with a barrage of long-range drones early Saturday, just hours after President Vladimir V. Putin, addressing an important annual economic forum in the city, rejected a peace overture by his Ukrainian counterpart.<\/p>\n
The Russian authorities called the attack \u201cunprecedented,\u201d with Gov. Aleksandr Drozdenko of the Leningrad region around the city announcing that more than 140 drones had been shot down. The attack ignited a fire at an unspecified military facility, causing \u201cinsignificant\u201d damage and the evacuation of some residents, he said.<\/p>\n
In an unusual move since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the city\u2019s governor, Alexander Beglov, urged residents to shelter indoors.<\/p>\n
Falling drone debris from an attack elsewhere, in the Tver region, killed a man, while three people were injured in the St. Petersburg area, officials said. Mr. Beglov described the injuries as \u201cminor\u201d and said that Russian air defenses had prevented any serious damage.<\/p>\n
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, writing<\/a> on X, stressed the distance that the drones had flown, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles), to strike a naval base at Kronstadt, on an island just west of St. Petersburg, as well as a naval arsenal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is time to end this war,\u201d Mr. Zelensky said in his post. \u201cBut Russia\u2019s ruler wants to keep fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n Russia unleashed its own barrage of scores of long-range drones against various targets on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said.<\/p>\n The Ukrainian drone strike on St. Petersburg was the second such attack<\/a> in four days. Black smoke from a burning oil facility billowed on Wednesday over the western edge of the city just as the country\u2019s business elites were gathering for the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.<\/p>\n While the forum was once a magnet for major Western investors, those investors have largely stayed away since the war began, although Russia said that 130 countries were represented this year. The United States sent an official representative for the first time in years, a low-level cultural delegation.<\/p>\n In conjunction with the forum\u2019s start, Mr. Zelensky had released a letter<\/a> to Mr. Putin suggesting that the two meet in person to try to reach a peace agreement. The letter was written in a slightly mocking tone, noting that Mr. Putin had already spent about half his over two decades as Russia\u2019s leader fighting Ukraine. The Ukrainian leader was counting from 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and fostered a separatist movement in the country\u2019s east.<\/p>\n