A Ukrainian drone strike hit an oil terminal in St. Petersburg on Saturday, Russian officials said, as Kyiv intensified its campaign against Russia's energy infrastructure.
The near-daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have disrupted fuel supplies and increased pressure on the Kremlin as Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year.
St. Petersburg Gov. Alexander Beglov said the strike targeted the city's Kirovsky district on the Baltic Sea. He added that Russian air defenses intercepted 72 Ukrainian drones over the city and the surrounding region.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the operation as part of Ukraine's "long-range sanctions" campaign against Russia. He said Ukrainian forces also struck a military target on the island of Kronstadt, just off the coast of St. Petersburg.
"The Ukrainian defense forces hit the port's oil infrastructure, which generates money for the Russian war, and there were also strikes on Kronstadt, an important military target," he said in a post on Telegram.
St. Petersburg's Kirovsky district was previously hit in June, ahead of Russia's flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, has been hit repeatedly by Ukrainian strikes, prompting local authorities to suspend gasoline sales to civilians. A Ukrainian attack on Saturday killed one person and injured two others, including a 10-year-old child, Moscow-installed Gov. Sergei Aksyonov said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shrugged off Ukraine's strikes on Russia's energy facilities as "not critical" and insisted the war will continue until his goals are met.
He has described the attacks on Russian energy infrastructure as an effort by Ukraine to distract attention from its battlefield losses, although analysts say the advance of Russian forces has stalled in recent months.
On Friday, Putin visited the Russian military headquarters overseeing the war in Ukraine and received a report on the capture of the city of Kostyantynivka after weeks of intense street battles. He hailed it as a key step toward capturing the nearby cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the remaining major strongholds in the so-called "forest belt" of heavily fortified cities in Ukraine's Donetsk region.
The capture of Kostyantynivka, a major transportation and industrial hub, is of "major strategic importance," Putin, clad in military fatigues, said in televised comments.
In a briefing Saturday, Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy, first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, said Ukrainian troops had been pushed back several kilometers (miles) and that fighting was taking place on the outskirts of the nearby town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka.
"The city is now under our full control. Units of the Southern Army Group are completing the clearing of city blocks, rooting out small groups and individual Ukrainian fighters who may still be hiding in basements and ruins," he said.
Zelenskyy denied that Russia had taken control of the city.
"It is just another Russian lie, an attempt to generate some kind of news story," he wrote on social media Saturday. "If Kostyantynivka were under Russian control, then perhaps Putin would have no problem meeting me there to find a diplomatic way to finally end this war. But the fact is, he won't cross the front line. Reality is very different from Putin's words."
Zelenskyy's post also appeared to appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump.
"Now, on the eve of America's Independence Day, Putin has chosen to lie to the world and to the president of the United States about the situation on the front."
Putin appears to believe his government can keep the fuel crisis from eroding his authority and support for the war he launched more than four years ago. At the very least, the attacks have brought the war home more directly for millions of Russians, shattering Putin's narrative of the conflict as something that does not affect the lives of ordinary people in his country.
The border city of Belgorod, which has also been repeatedly targeted by Ukrainian drone strikes, was left almost completely without power on Saturday because of overnight attacks, local media reported.
Meanwhile, eight people were wounded after a Russian attack struck residential buildings in Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, including two children, local authorities said Saturday.
