{"id":487015,"date":"2026-06-07T03:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T03:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/487015\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T03:22:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T03:22:13","slug":"ukrainian-drones-target-st-petersburg-after-putin-refuses-talks-with-zelenskiy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/487015\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian drones target St Petersburg after Putin refuses talks with Zelenskiy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine<\/a> launched a drone barrage on St Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, the final day of a major investment forum, hours after president Vladimir Putin<\/a> spoke there and refused a proposal for talks with Kyiv.<\/p>\n

The strikes on the city and the surrounding region set a defence ministry facility ablaze and disrupted operations at Russia\u2019s second-largest commercial airport for several hours.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s defence ministry said its \u200canti-aircraft units had intercepted and destroyed 339 Ukrainian drones \u200bover a 13-hour period in various Russian regions, including Moscow.<\/p>\n

Russian air defence shot down 144 drones over the Leningrad region, governor Alexander Drozdenko said in a post on Telegram, describing it as an unprecedented assault. A fire broke out at a defence ministry site in the Lomonosovsky district, prompting a partial evacuation of nearby residents.<\/p>\n

Kronstadt, the naval base on Kotlin Island, west of the city, was briefly closed to traffic, the district administration said.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed strikes on the St Petersburg region and said they were targeting the Russian navy\u2019s arsenals as well as Kronstadt. An oil depot in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia was also struck, Zelenskiy said on social media.<\/p>\n

The Leningrad region is a key commodities export hub in northwestern Russia that has been repeatedly targeted by Ukraine this year, including attacks that damaged energy export terminals. No damage to ports or export infrastructure was reported from Saturday\u2019s attack so far.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Friday at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin rejected Zelenskiy\u2019s call to meet and negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, now well into its fifth year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see no sense\u201d in holding a meeting with Zelenskiy, Putin said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Putin says \u2018no point\u2019 in meeting Zelenskiy over ending Ukraine warOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The forum, the Kremlin\u2019s premier economic and investment event, was overshadowed earlier in the week when Ukrainian long-range drones struck a St Petersburg oil terminal \u2013 the latest barrage deep into Russia territory. The Kronstadt base was also targeted at that time.<\/p>\n

Russia, meanwhile, kept up its own attacks on Ukraine. At least 12 civilians were killed and over 70 injured across the nation over the past day, regional authorities said on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Six people were killed in the Donetsk region, governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram. Another six people were killed and 27 others were injured in Kherson region, according to governor Oleksandr Prokudin. \u2013 Bloomberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine launched a drone barrage on St Petersburg, Russia on Saturday, the final day of a major investment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,3589,40,38,41,39,9688,5936,58419],"class_list":["post-487015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-russia","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine-crisis","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}