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.
It probably isn’t hard to sneak in drones through Central Asia or the Baltic states into Russia proper. Then just drive them to the city where the target is and then agents inside Russia release the drone and drive back. Four hours later the FSB have the wreckage surrounded but the perpetrators are already halfway to the border. By the time the Russians realise they’ve been played, the people who did it are already celebrating their successful mission in a bar in Riga.
While that’s a quite exciting spy story, it appears the attacks were done with long range drones.
The attack was supposedly carried out with the UKR Beaver, which is said to have a 1000km range.
This model was already used in attacks in Russia in 2023, so it is not untested.
Beaver drone info.
Article that the attack used a Beaver drone.