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<\/p>\nUkraine has again attacked Russian oil facilities on the Baltic Sea near St Petersburg using drones, with the governor reporting on Saturday that 67 enemy drones had been shot down, suggesting a large-scale strike.<\/p>\n
Leningrad Province Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko said parts of drones had come down in the port of Vysotsk on the Gulf of Finland, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS. Vysotsk is home to a large oil loading terminal.<\/p>\n
Videos circulating on Russian and Ukrainian Telegram channels suggested that St Petersburg’s own oil port may also have been hit, though city authorities made no comment on this.<\/p>\n
The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed attacks on the Leningrad Province surrounding St Petersburg but not on the city itself. It said 389 Ukrainian combat drones had been intercepted overnight across the country.<\/p>\n
Ukraine set fire to tanks at St Petersburg’s oil port in early June, just as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s international economic forum was due to begin in the city, which lies more than 1,000 kilometres from Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Four killed in Russian bombing of Ukrainian city of Sumy<\/p>\n
At least four people were killed and 27 injured in a Russian bombing raid on the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Friday evening, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.<\/p>\n
Survivors were still believed to be trapped in the rubble of a residential building.<\/p>\n
According to the Sumy regional administration, the Russian Air Force attacked the city centre with six glide bombs, which are weapons released by fighter jets while still in the safety of their own airspace and then guided to their targets over dozens of kilometres.<\/p>\n
Ukraine refuses to confirm the loss of Kostiantynivka<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian military has not confirmed Moscow’s claim that it has captured the town of Kostiantynivka in the Donbass industrial region of eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian General Staff’s morning report stated that fighting was continuing in the city, which once had a population of 67,000.<\/p>\n
Fighting is also continuing in villages even closer to Russian positions, such as Ivanopylia.<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin had said the previous evening during a visit to a command centre that the Russian army had brought Kostiantynivka fully under its control.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian military blogs such as DeepState continue to list only parts of the town as being under Russian occupation. Nor have Russian military bloggers so far claimed the entire city for their army.<\/p>\n
Institute: Putin needs positive news<\/p>\n
The US Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that Russian forces had made territorial gains in Kostiantynivka in recent weeks. However, the Russian presence in the city primarily consists of small strike forces operating between Ukrainian positions.<\/p>\n
The ISW interpreted Putin’s victory announcement as an attempt to attract media attention ahead of the weekend’s celebrations marking 250 years of US independence.<\/p>\n
The Russian president appeared in uniform among the military for the first time in a long while. Announcing the army’s successes is important for Putin.<\/p>\n
The fuel crisis in Russia, caused by Ukrainian counter-attacks using drones, has sparked widespread discontent within the population.<\/p>\n
One of Putin’s war aims is to bring the Donbass – Ukraine’s industrial and coal-mining heartland – entirely under Russian control. If Kostiantynivka were to fall, of the larger settlements in the Donetsk region, only Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka would remain under Ukrainian control.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
FILE PHOTO – Firefighters battle the fire caused by a Russian bombing at the train station in the city of Kostiantynivka. (is associated with: \u00abUkraine strikes oil terminals near St Petersburg; Russia bombs Sumy\u00bb) Hector Adolfo Quintanar Perez\/ZUMA Press Wire\/dpa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukraine has again attacked Russian oil facilities on the Baltic Sea near St Petersburg using drones, with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[51632,136219,136220,202,204,203,199,201,200,136216,21553,136217,136221,136218,5768],"class_list":["post-329440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-eastern-ukraine","tag-kostiantynivka","tag-russian-defence-ministry","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-sumy","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian-city","tag-ukrainian-drone-attack","tag-ukrainian-military","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}