Moscow said its air defenses shot down 221 Ukrainian drones targeting a wide swathe of eastern Russia overnight, from the regions bordering Ukraine to Baltic Sea oil terminals in its Leningrad region. Seven people were injured. Photo by Igor Tkachenko/EPA
Sept. 12 (UPI) — Russia said Friday that it shot down hundreds of Ukrainian drones overnight, many of them targeting facilities of the multinational Russian oil company, Lukoil, southwest of Moscow, according to the defense ministry.
More than half of the 221 UAVs were brought down over the regions of Smolensk and Bryansk, where five civilians and two military personnel were injured after a bus was struck, while nine got through to the Moscow area before being destroyed.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said emergency services were attending a location hit by falling debris from downed drones but gave no details of where or the extent of the damage. Russian social media accounts reported blasts in Mozhaysk and Dedovsk in the western suburbs of the capital.
As many as 30 others were intercepted in the Leningrad region, temporarily closing St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport and setting ablaze a vessel at Russia’s largest oil terminal northwest of the city at Primorsk on the Baltic Sea.
Secret Service of Ukraine sources told The Kyiv Independent that the agency was responsible for the Leningrad strikes, which also successfully targeted three pumping stations serving the Ust-Luga oil terminal 80 miles southwest of St. Petersburg, as part of what was believed to be one of the largest attacks on the region since the start of the war in 2022.
Drones were also downed over Oryol, Kaluga, Novgorod, Belgorod, Tver, Pskov, Tula and Kursk — but without any further casualties, authorities said.
Ukraine stepped up its targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure in August, hitting more than a dozen refineries and knocking out a fifth of Russia’s oil processing capacity during the month, according to the White House.
Russia has tried to downplay the disruption, with state-run media outlets claiming it was caused by “unscheduled repairs.”
Ukraine has modified its drone strategy from trying to attack Moscow and military facilities on Russian soil to higher-profile targets in an effort to make the Russian people more cognizant of the war.
At least 31 Ukrainian drones were downed early Tuesday as they closed in on the Black Sea resort of Sochi, hours after President Vladimir Putin was in the city for a virtual meeting with other world leaders belonging to the so-called BRICS grouping of economic powers.
The attack killed one person, damaged six homes and forced authorities to close the city’s international airport.