Russia said on Saturday it intercepted hundreds of Ukrainian drones including near St Petersburg, where Moscow is hosting a major economic forum, as Ukraine reported at least three people killed by Russian strikes.
Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fifth year, remain stalled over the conflict in the Middle East.
The St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – once dubbed “Russia’s Davos” – ends on Saturday, a day after the event featured a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Eighty-six UAVs have been shot down over Leningrad region. Combat operations continue,” said Aleksandr Drozdenko, governor of the region whose major city is St Petersburg and which also includes key Baltic ports.
On the first day of the summit, Ukrainian drones hit an oil complex and military base in St Petersburg, which is also Putin’s home city.
Overnight, Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence downed a total of 376 Ukrainian drones “over Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula regions, Moscow region, Crimea Republic, Abkhazia Republic, and over the waters of the Azov and Black Sea”.
In southern Ukraine, authorities found the bodies of two men who had been unaccounted for following an attack on Zaporizhzhia, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.
One person was killed and three wounded in Russian drone and artillery attacks in Dnipropetrovsk, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha wrote on Telegram.
A fire broke out at an oil depot in the city of Ust-Labinsk in southern Russia following a drone attack, according to local authorities, with no reports of wounded.
Russian forces also downed nine Ukrainian drones headed for Moscow on Saturday, according to earlier updates by the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
In the Black Sea off Russian-annexed Crimea, a Turkish-flagged fishing boat was attacked and sank, leaving one sailor dead and four others wounded, the Turkish Coast Guard said late on Friday.
The Duru 67 was attacked west of Sevastopol in Crimea earlier on Friday, according to a Coast Guard Command statement. The peninsula was illegally seized from Ukraine by Russia and annexed in March 2014. The statement did not provide further details of the attack.
Five injured sailors were rescued by another trawler, the Burak Kaya, but one died on the way back to Turkey.
A Coast Guard vessel carrying a medical team reached the Burak Kaya 115 nautical miles north of Turkey’s Inebolu port and the casualties were placed on board.
After a 15-hour return voyage, the injured were transferred to a hospital in the provincial capital Kastamonu, state-run Anadolu news agency reported. Provincial Health Director Fevzi Yavuzyılmaz said they were suffering shrapnel wounds and one had undergone minor surgery aboard the Coast Guard ship.
“Two of our patients have relatively minor injuries and two have slightly more serious injuries,” he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. The waters off Ukraine have seen regular attacks on shipping since the war began in February 2022.
In November, the Turkish government condemned Ukrainian drone attacks on two oil tankers in the Black Sea as posing “serious risks to navigation, life, property and environmental safety in the region”.
Additional reporting by Associated Press