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Posted on 06/03/2026 5:54:02 AM PDT by Cronos
Ukrainian drones on Wednesday attacked St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, on the opening day of an annual economic conference that President Vladimir V. Putin has tried to cultivate into a showcase of a modern and prosperous country.
It was the second time in a month that Ukraine had struck a major Russian city before an event important to Mr. Putin, as Kyiv expands a campaign of long-range strikes aimed at inflicting economic damage on Russia and demonstrating its vulnerability to attacks.
In early May, Ukrainian forces hit sites in Moscow, including a high-rise apartment building near the city center, days before the annual Victory Day parade, the most important event on the Kremlin’s calendar. A truncated version of the parade was later held after Ukraine mockingly said it would “permit” Russia to hold the event.
On Wednesday, drones hit infrastructure facilities in three districts of St. Petersburg, causing damage and injuring several people, Aleksandr Beglov, the city’s governor, said in a statement. Nearly 60 drones were shot down in the Leningrad region, which surrounds the city, Aleksandr Drozdenko, the region’s governor, said.
St. Petersburg’s main airport, Pulkovo, suspended operations for almost five hours, according to Rosaviatsia, the Russian aviation authority. Early in the morning, the city’s residents reported smoke in the sky, as well as roaring noises and bangs, according to Fontanka, a local news website.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Nice to see Russia still losing
Pootin’s final days, full of failure ... (lol)
The Russian public is slowly understanding that Russia is losing Putin’s “Special Military Operation”, which very much resembles a rather nasty and destructive war.
Agreed, but small long range strikes will do no real damage to the Rus. It will only cause Putin to destroy more Uke cities. No movement will be gained only losses. Time to negotiate an end to this madness
I did a quick check to find that St Petersburg is over a thousand miles from Ukraine.
I’m just curious, how could a drone make it that far without being detected by Russian air defenses? For a drone to go that far it would have to be fairly large to carry that much fuel.
But then again the US walked all over Iran’s air defenses which were mostly Russian and Chinese.
To whoever keeps posting the “Biden” keywords ...
NEWS FLASH -
Biden is gone, dude ... Trump’s in power now ... time to move into 2026, and stop living in the past ...
imho - and, as I’ve said elsewhere, I am far from any kind of military expert - the Russian military is good at causing damage, but not at winning.
This seems to be a hangup from even Napoleonic times
The Russian public is slowly understanding that Russia is losing Putin’s “Special Military Operation”, which very much resembles a rather nasty and destructive war.
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They are unpatriotic alarmists and will be dealt with accordingly.
The Russian corvette “Boykiy”-a warship outfitted with guided missiles-was reportedly hit at Kronstadt, near St. Petersburg, while undergoing scheduled maintenance in dry dock, according to Ukraine’s military.
Still from video posted by Unmanned Systems Forces commander Madyar showing a strike against Russian Stereguschiy-class corvette Boikiy at Kronstadt Naval Base near St. Petersburg
The drones are detected, but Ukraine launched hundreds of drones, overwhelming the defensive systems.
Ukraine launched hundreds of drones at Russian targets early Wednesday, sending black smoke rising above the historic heart of St. Petersburg just as the event dubbed “Putin’s Davos” was due to get underway in the city.l,
Overall, 754 Ukrainian drones were shot down in the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to the news agency Interfax.
Well, it took a 1/2 dozen years of sons not coming home from Afghanistan, where Russian Mothers said enough and toppled the regime. We are getting to that point, and there have been 10x as many dead in this boondoggle. Ukraine has always taken this posture: we don’t have to win, we just have to survive.
Ukraine has made it a point to start burning down refineries. In the new era of cheap drones they are almost indefensible.
“I’m just curious, how could a drone make it that far without being detected by Russian air defenses? For a drone to go that far it would have to be fairly large to carry that much fuel”
In the past these have been special ops projects.
The Ukrainians sneak a semi-truck full of drones across the border and then launch near the target.
With foreign delegations exceeding the number of nations attending Moscow’s May Day Parade, the Banderites hope to score cheap points without consequences. Those five mini-drone bases in Latvia will probably get a special ops visit or maybe a more public destruction/expansion of the conflict. Ukraine can only hope to expand the conflict, it is losing.
The fact that Trump had to call off the Ukrainians and EUropeans on May Day’s Parade, shouldn’t have required a geniuses intelligence to understand attacking the International Forum is even worse. The gamgle to drag the Baltics and Finland into the conflict, or soon the Banderites attacks on Belarus, this war has to exapnd for the griff to continue to line pockets of the MIC and politicians holding the purse strings.
Russia has been content to not hit non-Ukrainian targets for most the conflict. Now the target list presented to the west includes themselves, for only in Ukraine. However, the EU is no position to go to war with Russia. They have neither the forces, the missiles or the economies to wage a protracted war, nor can EU-NATO without the US stay in the fight a week of ballastic missile strikes of even the conventional nature. We are approaching the moment of truth for Ukraine. The Zelinski government will not be in Kiev when this is over. In fact, unless Zelinski (possibly the 9th largest real estate holder in the United States) is in the US, if the conflict expands to EUrope, he will die in an EUropean capital.
You only have to look at the annual production numbers to understand that these attacks have not stopped Russia from selling more oil each year of the conflict than the previous. The reason attacks on oil targets are so far into Russia is because it is hard to hit the majority closer to Ukraine due to ADA and Drone defenses, so the less defended get smaller pin prick attacks due to the fuel/payload available at such distances, allowing repairs sooner. Ukraine has devasted a couple of refineries but they are losing the energy war.
Russia merely has to attack one specific set of targets to completely defeat and destroy the EUropean Union/NATO economies - DESTRUCTION OF LNG TERMINALS IN EU/OIL PORT TERMINALS. Russia doesn’t have to kill a city full of people or destroy a government to defeat the EU, simply make it impossible for Trump’s LNG to reach EU ports, and instead of trying to get to a war in 2029 with Russia those EU leaders will be scrambling for food and energy just to keep those (unkilled) civilian populations alive. I would not put it past the French or Brits to nuke EU themselves to alleviate the crushing burden of being without LNG/OIL.
FAO EU. It won’t just be a dozen Drone Manufacturing facilities in the EU that are attacked, they will come begging Putin for overland energy by rail first and pipelines they pay for themselves later.
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