One killed in St. Petersburg drone attack as flights begin returning

Recovery was already moving at different speeds. Pulkovo airport had begun serving flights again, and VK said its services remained available after an attack on its data center in neighboring Leningrad Region. But firefighters were still tackling the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal blaze on October 18, with no confirmed final assessment of the industrial damage.⁠35⁠34⁠17

The casualty figures supersede early accounts that no casualties had been reported. The exact wording, scope and timing of that initial assessment have not been established, so the evidence supports a changed casualty picture—not a precise reconstruction of every official revision. The later toll was reported by Kommersant, Petersburg Diary and Reuters, all attributing it to Beglov.⁠1⁠11⁠13⁠12

Those are citywide totals for the overnight attack. They cannot be assigned specifically to the terminal, the oil depot, the warehouses or the data center: no site-by-site casualty breakdown has been established. Likewise, the residential count measures buildings damaged, not buildings destroyed. It does not tell residents or readers how extensive the repairs will be, how many households were displaced or what recovery will cost.⁠5⁠11

Beglov identified fires at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, the Ruchyi oil depot and industrial warehouses. These were separate locations within the same attack, not different descriptions of one terminal fire. A report published at 08:03 UTC on October 18 still described firefighting at the terminal; complete extinguishment at the other sites had not been established either.⁠5⁠17

“The city is restoring the affected civilian infrastructure,” Beglov said, according to Kommersant. That is evidence of work underway, not work finished. His announcement that the aerial danger had ended was not an announcement that the fires were out.⁠11

Pulkovo suspended arrivals and departures during the attack, interrupting air travel as emergency crews responded on the ground. By the morning of October 18, the airport was moving back toward operation: Fontanka reported at 06:40 UTC that flight servicing had begun again, in coordination with the relevant authorities.⁠1⁠35

“The airport is returning to operation,” its press service said in a message displayed as issued at “9:10.” The accessible account does not specify that time’s zone, so it cannot establish an exact UTC reopening time. Nor has the complete suspension interval been established. There is no confirmed total of cancellations, diversions, delays or affected passengers for this particular overnight disruption. Flights moving again should not be mistaken for a fully recovered schedule.⁠35

At VK, the distinction is between an attack on a facility and an interruption to users. The company’s October 18 statement said: “A drone attack was carried out on VK’s data center in the Leningrad region. VK services are available to users as normal.”⁠34

Physical damage has been reported, but VK’s statement does not describe its extent—or report a fire, equipment losses, data loss or an outage. Normal service availability does not establish that the building escaped damage; an attack on the building does not, by itself, establish that users lost service.⁠36⁠34

The St. Petersburg Oil Terminal is a specialized liquid-product transshipment complex in the Big Port of St. Petersburg. That role makes the fire consequential beyond the site itself, but there is no established inventory of damaged tanks, measured volume of petroleum products lost, monetary loss estimate or verified duration of any loading interruption.⁠25⁠17

Its size also needs careful description. Initial accounts put annual loading capacity at 10 million or 12.5 million tonnes, figures that remain unverified. The operator’s own undated website lists loading capacity of 1.1 million tonnes a month and, separately, reception capacity of 1.1 million tonnes a month. Those describe different stages of moving cargo and must not be added together.⁠1⁠24

Multiplying the monthly loading figure by 12 gives an annual equivalent of 13.2 million tonnes. That is arithmetic, not an operator-quoted annual design rating, and the undated page does not establish what capacity applied on the day of the attack. Actual cargo handled is another measure again: an article reproduced on the operator’s website reports 2023 throughput of 8.1 million tonnes, down 7.4 percent from the previous year. Neither capacity nor historical throughput measures what this fire destroyed.⁠24⁠27

No quantified reduction in exports or demonstrated effect on fuel prices has been established. The terminal’s scale is useful context; it is not a substitute for a damage assessment.

The attack began during the night of October 17–18. Reports described a drone alert, explosions and air-defense activity after midnight, but an exact starting time and explicit time zone have not been established. Article publication times cannot fill that gap.⁠10⁠3

TASS attributed a total of 126 drones intercepted over Leningrad Region to Governor Aleksandr Drozdenko; an initial Kyiv Independent account gave 127. The difference remains unexplained. Neither is an independently verified count, and an interception total does not reveal how many drones reached targets.⁠1⁠2

Responsibility for the attack has not been independently established. Claims involving FP-1 drones or a drone maker’s responsibility remain unverified, as do reported strikes on a bridge or electricity substation. Reports of local power cuts do not identify the equipment hit, while possible mobile-internet disruption has no established duration or scale.⁠21⁠1⁠2⁠3

The immediate consequences are serious without expanding that uncertain inventory: people killed and injured, homes damaged, fires at energy and industrial sites, and interrupted air travel. Flights have begun returning and civilian restoration has started. The harder measures of recovery—fires fully extinguished, industrial operations restored and damaged homes made habitable—remain unresolved.⁠11⁠5⁠35⁠17