Russia claimed to have taken a village in eastern Ukraine and thwarted a Ukrainian drone strike on a major oil facility in Saint Petersburg as its top diplomat rejected any prospect of nuclear arms control talks with the United States while it waged “hybrid war” against Moscow.
Russia’s defence ministry said its forces seized Vesele village in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Thursday and shot down Ukrainian attack drones over several provinces, including the Leningrad region on the Baltic Sea, which has Saint Petersburg as its capital.
Debris from a drone reportedly fell near the large Saint Petersburg Oil Terminal, and the plant’s co-owner, Mikhail Skigin, thanked air defence units for averting “a horrible catastrophe that would have had dreadful consequences”.
The oil plant is about 1,000km north of Ukraine and it is not clear where the drone was launched. Kyiv has expanded drone attacks in recent months, and some reports suggest Ukrainian operatives or sympathisers may be launching the weapons from inside Russia.
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An unnamed source in Kyiv’s GUR military intelligence agency told local media that it was behind an operation using “modern Ukrainian assets” that led to “confirmed strikes on targets”.
“Now military facilities in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad region are within reach of Ukrainian forces,” the source added.
Russian officials said falling debris from the drone caused no injuries and no damage to the plant, which continued to work normally. Saint Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov called a meeting of city security officials on Thursday evening in response to the incident.
Ukraine did not respond to Russia’s claim to have occupied Vesele village, but said its air defence units shot down 22 of 33 attack drones in the early hours of Thursday. Drones that hit the Black Sea port of Odesa damaged more than 130 apartments in 11 buildings, and shelling in the northeastern Kharkiv region killed one civilian and injured two others.
Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed Kyiv’s announcement this week that it had signed a deal on future security guarantees with Britain, and said nothing would stop Moscow continuing its invasion of Ukraine – which it describes as a “special military operation” to stop the country and its western allies posing a supposed threat to Russia.
“There is no hope that Russia will be defeated in some way...Those who have not studied history – and there are many of them in the West – can fantasise about this subject,” he said. “We do not object to agreements that other countries have reached with Ukraine, but this does not change our goal at all...We are working towards the goals of the special operation consistently, determinedly, and we will achieve these goals.”
Mr Lavrov also ruled out any talks on nuclear arms control with the US. “In the context of Washington’s hybrid war against Russia, we do not see any grounds not only for additional joint measures in the field of arms control and strategic risk-reduction, but also in general for any conversation with the United States about strategic stability.”
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