In a striking development that overshadowed the kickoff of Russia’s high-profile annual economic gathering, two coordinated Ukrainian drone attacks targeted key infrastructure in St. Petersburg just hours before the opening of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a signature event where President Vladimir Putin planned to showcase Russia’s claimed economic resilience to global attendees.
The strikes — one that ignited a large blaze at a city oil terminal and another that hit the historic Kronstadt naval base on a Gulf of Finland island just off St. Petersburg’s coast — delivered another public embarrassment for the Kremlin, which has spent months framing the two-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a distant conflict that does not disrupt ordinary Russian life or key national events. Located just 9 miles from the forum’s main venue, the oil terminal strike sent a thick black plume of smoke visible across the St. Petersburg skyline, setting a somber tone for the event that Putin, a St. Petersburg native, was set to address Thursday.
The attacks underscore a worrying new reality for the Kremlin: Ukraine’s steadily improving drone capabilities now allow it to strike deep within Russian territory, even at heavily protected sites of enormous symbolic importance to the Russian state. Kronstadt, the historic home of Russia’s Baltic Fleet founded alongside St. Petersburg by Peter the Great, remains a landmark of Russian naval heritage despite most of the fleet’s relocation to the Kaliningrad exclave. This is not an isolated incident: in May, Putin ordered a scaled-back version of Moscow’s annual Victory Day military parade over drone strike fears, and just days later, a large drone assault on Moscow suburbs killed three people, confirming the capital’s vulnerability too. In response to the St. Petersburg strikes, local authorities disrupted cellular internet service in an effort to disrupt drone guidance systems, and dozens of flights arriving and departing from the city’s main airport were delayed or rerouted to other airports.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov defended Moscow’s response, saying Russian forces were continuing offensive operations inside Ukraine specifically to prevent further such strikes on Russian territory. He confirmed that the “systematic” strikes on Kyiv that Russia threatened last week are currently ongoing. The escalation follows a massive Russian aerial assault across Ukraine Tuesday that used hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles to hit cities including Kyiv, leaving 23 dead and 151 wounded, according to Ukrainian officials.
Originally modeled on Switzerland’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum has long been Putin’s flagship event to attract foreign investment and highlight Russian economic progress. Following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, all Western business and political leaders boycotted the gathering, so Moscow has pivoted to courting delegations from the Global South and other partners to advance its stated goal of building a “multipolar world” countering Western dominance. This year, the forum’s guest of honor is Saudi Arabia, which has sent a large official delegation, with other high-level attendees including the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania, China’s vice president, and for the first time in years, a U.S. official: Rodney Mims Cook Jr., head of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
Despite Moscow’s efforts to project economic stability, Russia’s economic outlook has darkened in recent months after an initial post-invasion boost from massive military spending faded. The Russian government has already been forced to raise domestic taxes and increase internal borrowing to keep widening budget deficits under control. While Putin is expected to downplay these ongoing economic challenges during his keynote address, the pre-forum drone strikes have thrown into sharp relief the cascading security and economic risks that the ongoing conflict continues to pose for Russia, even in its most politically and symbolically important cities.