![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AP26185305813918-e1783174525563.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A Ukrainian drone attack struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg on Saturday, Russian officials said, as Kyiv presses on with bombardment of\u00a0Russia\u2019s oil infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Almost daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have created a\u00a0fuel crisis\u00a0and heaped political pressure on the Kremlin as its\u00a0all-out invasion of Ukraine\u00a0stretches into its fifth year.<\/p>\n
Gov. Alexander Beglov said the city\u2019s Kirovsky district on the Baltic Sea was hit. He also said that air defenses shot down 72 Ukrainian drones across Russia\u2019s second-largest city and the surrounding region.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as part of Ukraine\u2019s \u201clong-range sanctions\u201d against Russia. He said that Ukrainian forces also hit a military target on the island of Kronstadt, just off the coast of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Ukrainian defense forces hit the port oil infrastructure, which earns money for the Russian war, and there were also hits on Kronstadt \u2014 an important military target,\u201d he said in a post on Telegram.<\/p>\n
St. Petersburg\u2019s Kirovsky district was previously hit in June, ahead of Russia\u2019s flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.<\/p>\n
The Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, has suffered particularly from heavy strikes, causing local authorities to suspend gasoline sales to civilians. A Ukrainian attack on Saturday killed one person and injured two more, including a 10-year-old child, the Moscow-installed Gov. Sergei Aksyonov said.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin has\u00a0shrugged off Ukraine\u2019s strikes\u00a0on Russia\u2019s energy facilities as \u201cnot critical,\u201d and insisted\u00a0the war will continue until his goals are met.<\/p>\n
He has described the attacks on Russian energy as an effort by Ukraine to distract attention from its losses on the battlefield, although analysts say the advance of Russian forces has been\u00a0stymied in recent months.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Putin visited the Russian military headquarters directing the war in Ukraine and received a report on the capture of the city of Kostyantynivka, after weeks of intense street battles. He hailed it as a key step toward capturing the nearby cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the key remaining strongholds in the so-called \u201cforest belt\u201d of heavily fortified cities in the Donetsk region that remain in Ukraine\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
The capture of Kostyantynivka, a big transport and industrial hub, is of \u201cmajor strategic importance,\u201d Putin, clad in military fatigues, said in televised comments.<\/p>\n
In a briefing Saturday, Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy, the first deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, said that Ukrainian troops had been pushed back several kilometers (miles) and that fighting was taking place on the outskirts of the nearby town of Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe city is now under our full control. Units of the Southern Army Group are completing the clearance of city blocks, rooting out small groups and individual Ukrainian fighters who may still be hiding in basements and ruins,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy denied that Russia took control of the city. \u201cIt is just another Russian lie, an attempt to generate some kind of a news story,\u201d he wrote on social media Saturday. \u201cIf Kostiantynivka were under Russian control, then perhaps Putin would have no problem meeting me there to find a diplomatic way to finally end this war. But the fact is, he won\u2019t cross the front line \u2014 reality is very different from Putin\u2019s words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy\u2019s post also seemed to appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump. \u201cNow, on the eve of America\u2019s Independence Day, Putin has chosen to lie to the world and to the President of the United States about the situation on the front.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin appears to believe his government can keep the fuel crisis from eroding his authority and support for the war he launched more than four years ago. At the very least, the attacks have\u00a0brought the war home\u00a0even more poignantly for millions of Russians, shattering Putin\u2019s narrative of the conflict as something that doesn\u2019t affect the lives of ordinary people in his country.<\/p>\n
The border city of Belgorod, which Ukrainian drone strikes have also repeatedly targeted, was left almost completely without power on Saturday due to overnight attacks, local media reported.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, eight people were wounded after a Russian attack struck residential buildings in Ukraine\u2019s southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, including two children, local authorities said on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Ukrainian #drones #target #Russian #oil #infrastructure #fuel #crisis #adds #political #pressure #Putin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Ukrainian drone attack struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg on Saturday, Russian officials said, as Kyiv presses on with bombardment of\u00a0Russia\u2019s oil infrastructure. Almost daily long-range attacks on… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1220,1065,4414,546,1278,280,675,676,4208,2587,1196,2584,4180],"class_list":["post-10559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-adds","tag-crisis","tag-drones","tag-fuel","tag-infrastructure","tag-oil","tag-political","tag-pressure","tag-putin","tag-russian","tag-target","tag-ukraine-invasion","tag-ukrainian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}