Thick Smoke Over St. Petersburg Raises Unpleasant Questions to Russian Authorities

After Ukrainian drone attacks on facilities in St. Petersburg on the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia's current response strategies require fundamental changes.

Photo: Pravda.Ru by Inna Novikova is licensed under All Rights Reserved

Saint Petersburg, Rostral Columns, Neva

Strike on St. Petersburg Oil Terminal Had Been Anticipated

Ukrainian forces attacked the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal and a military vessel in Kronstadt with drones. Volodymyr Zelensky did not need a fortune teller to understand that the strike should come precisely on the opening day of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address the forum tomorrow, and a burning terminal provides an ideal image capable of causing concern not only for him but also for the many guests attending the event.

Bloomberg celebrated the development:

"The forum, often referred to as 'Putin's Davos,' is meant to demonstrate Russia's resilience in wartime and its ability to withstand Western attempts to isolate it. However, strikes on St. Petersburg's oil terminal produced at least four columns of smoke that drifted over the forum's main venue south of the city as guests arrived on the first day of the event," the publication wrote.

At the same time, the NATO Secretary General arrived in Kyiv by train at a railway station that remains untouched. Why? There is no answer to that question.

Many will say that Russia does not know how to fight in the information sphere, but it has to learn. Yesterday, the Ministry of Defense finally published a list of facilities hit by Russian Aerospace Forces strikes. It would be useful to provide imagery showing their geolocation and satellite photographs of the aftermath. This matters because it helps maintain morale among Russian citizens.

What Constitutes a Systematic Response?

It is widely known that the Baltic states participate in attacks on facilities near St. Petersburg. Has the line between proxy warfare and direct war not been crossed once again? For many, the answer is obvious, but not for Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Today, he stated that Russia would respond "systematically" to strikes on the Northern Capital. In Russia, only the lazy refrain from criticizing that response, while in Ukraine many openly mock it. A systematic response means acting on a large scale not once a week but every day for a month.

Moreover, a Ukrainian drone today deliberately killed eight Russian civilians in a bus traveling from Moscow to Simferopol in Yenakiyevo in the Donetsk People's Republic. Before that, there was a deliberate strike on a college in Starobilsk in the Luhansk People's Republic.

Individual Russian Aerospace Forces strikes, even when they cause serious infrastructure damage, are viewed in Kyiv as situational crises that can be managed with loud statements about the "100 percent destruction of all targets" and then used to justify further requests for Western air defense systems. What is needed is a genuine shift in public consciousness among Kyiv residents — and ideally among Ukrainians more broadly.

Constant nights spent in metro stations without sufficient space, disruptions to public transportation, chronic sleep deprivation, and the continuous expectation of the next strike would inevitably demoralize both the civilian population and governing institutions. This would lead to growing apathy, declining trust in official propaganda, and constant demands to end hostilities at any cost.

A Response Along the Iranian Model

In the absence of such pressure, Zelensky continues to show his sponsors that Ukraine is holding firm and will continue to inflict damage on Russia, something they consider important and necessary. As a result, loans and weapons will continue to flow.

Meanwhile, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's military intelligence and designated in Russia as a terrorist and extremist, told Western journalists today that they "should not spend too much time thinking about the Oreshnik and similar systems because they are mostly demonstrative weapons."

To wipe the smug smile from his face, Russia cannot avoid adopting the Iranian model of military action — strikes against the Baltic states and Finland, which, according to a report by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, manufacture drones for the Ukrainian armed forces and dispatch them from their territories to carry out attacks on the Leningrad Region.