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.
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.
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.
Depends. Don’t try at home! Keep your drones in line of sight, which probably means much less than 1000km.