FP-1 drones over St Petersburg: oil terminal, fuel depot and VK data centre hit

What is known

Overnight into Sunday, 18 October, Ukrainian attack drones targeted St Petersburg and the Leningrad region. In the evening Ukrainian manufacturer Fire Point said its FP-1 drones had hit three facilities: the Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi fuel depot and a data centre of the social network VKontakte. “Fires broke out at the oil terminal and the fuel depot, and serious damage to the data centre is reported,” the company said.

The oil terminal and fuel depot

The Petersburg Oil Terminal is one of the largest oil-loading complexes in the region. It receives, stores and ships petroleum products, including for export, with a throughput of 12.5 million tonnes a year. According to Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi, its tank farm has 32 tanks with a total capacity of 442,000 cubic metres. The St Petersburg governor officially acknowledged the hit; photos and videos from residents showed the fire still burning at 07:30. The BBC notes that the terminal was already attacked in early July.

The Ruchyi depot is a separate complex for storing and shipping motor fuel, with 36 tanks holding about 73,900 cubic metres. Russian authorities did not report a hit there.

The VK data centre

Another target was the VKontakte data centre in the village of Novosergiyevka in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region. It is one of the social network’s key data-processing centres, storing users’ photos, videos and other content. According to previously published data, it has four machine halls, 640 server racks and more than 20,000 servers.

Militarnyi reports that the neighbouring 330 kV Vostochnaya substation was also attacked, leaving some residents without power. Between 03:00 and 05:00 users complained en masse about VKontakte outages. VK acknowledged the strike on its data centre but said its services were operating normally. VK founder Pavel Durov, according to the BBC, wrote that he had built the damaged data centre 15 years ago.

What else burned

BBC News Ukrainian reports that a logistics centre of the Ozon marketplace in St Petersburg was also hit; the company reported a fire and the evacuation of staff. The OSINT project Exilenova+ estimates the warehouse at about 51,000 square metres. According to the BBC, the attack may have affected at least 14 other Russian regions.

Scale of the attack

As usual, Moscow claimed mass interceptions: according to the BBC, the Russian defence ministry said it had downed 1,256 drones and 7 Flamingo cruise missiles over the past day. Leningrad region governor Alexander Drozdenko claimed, as TSN reports, that 57 drones were downed over the region. According to Militarnyi, a bridge and port infrastructure in the city were also attacked. These claims cannot be independently verified.

Why it matters

Strikes on oil infrastructure cut Russia’s export revenues and its ability to supply fuel to the army. The hit on a data centre signals that the digital infrastructure the Russian state relies on is also within reach. The strikes follow Kyiv’s decision to resume attacks on Russian refineries after Russia failed to respect the “energy ceasefire”.

Earlier: Zelensky: ban on strikes on Russian refineries lifted.