Ukraine sent a massive wave of drones at Russia overnight on Oct. 18, starting fires at an oil export terminal and an oil depot in St. Petersburg.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses downed 1,015 Ukrainian drones across 15 Russian regions, the Black Sea and Crimea.
St. Petersburg Gov. Alexander Beglov reported one person dead and five were hurt, several warehouses in the Kolpinsky district were hit, and flights at St. Petersburg’s main airport were disrupted as a result.
Leningrad Oblast Gov. Alexander Drozdenko also said about 20,000 people lost power in the surrounding Leningrad region. Russian retailer Ozon and tech company VK confirmed that their facilities were each targeted.
Russian attacks hit Ukraine too. A woman died in Zaporizhzhia and at least two others were wounded, including a 6-year-old girl, local officials said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said strikes on energy sites across four regions left “tens of thousands of families” without electricity. He also said Russia fired nearly 2,700 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 66 missiles at Ukraine.
The barrage came one day after Trump waived a sanctions package against Russia that Congress had passed.
In a Truth Social post on Oct. 18, Trump said he did not “want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” and that he could sign the sanctions “later, or any time that I want!” He also blamed Zelenskyy for hitting Russian diesel refineries and said Zelenskyy “doesn’t want to end this war.”
Zelenskyy told NBC that the U.S. siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin would be a “historic mistake.”
Zelenskyy also said the U.S. had resumed intelligence sharing with Kyiv on Russian missile strikes, which was “blocked for some period of time.” Later, he said he talked with Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner about how they can “move diplomacy forward.”
“America should see that Russia is not taking any reciprocal steps in response to sanctions relief or agreements,” Zelenskyy said.
The dispute also follows Trump’s Oct. 11 announcement of an “energy ceasefire,” which came without details.
Zelenskyy posted on X that Russia carried out 76 strikes on Ukrainian energy and oil-and-gas sites during the week that followed the announcement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state news agency Tass that Kyiv was “resisting” but couldn’t “change the current course of events.”
