SAINT PETERSBURG: Ukrainian drones hit a warehouse for a Russian e-commerce giant near Saint Petersburg early Friday, triggering a fire that sent smoke pouring over the historic city, according to local officials and an AFP reporter.<\/p>\n
Kyiv has targeted Saint Petersburg as it steps up long-range drone strikes on Russian energy, military and logistics sites in recent weeks, calling the attacks justified retribution for Moscow\u2019s nightly drone and missile barrages of its cities.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s defense ministry said its forces shot down some 571 drones overnight over more than a dozen regions and Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.<\/p>\n
In Saint Petersburg, an AFP reporter saw grey smoke rising into the morning sky over high-rise residential buildings in the city, President Vladimir Putin\u2019s hometown that is more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border.<\/p>\n
The local governor reported that a warehouse for Wildberries \u2014 Russia\u2019s largest online retailer often referred to as \u201cRussia\u2019s Amazon\u201d \u2014 was on fire after the strike.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree people were wounded,\u201d Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the surrounding Leningrad region said on social media.<\/p>\n
It was the third overnight attack by Ukraine on Wildberries\u2019 sites in the past week.<\/p>\n
Last weekend, eight night-shift workers were killed in attacks on Wildberries sites that saw one of the company\u2019s main warehouses outside Moscow burn to the ground.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky alleged after the first attack that the facilities were used to \u201csupply sanctioned components for drone production and navigation equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyiv calls its campaign \u201clong-range sanctions,\u201d saying the attacks are justified retribution for Russia\u2019s nightly drone and missile barrages of its cities since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
The campaign has triggered nationwide fuel shortages and, Kyiv says, dented Russia\u2019s financial war chest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SAINT PETERSBURG: Ukrainian drones hit a warehouse for a Russian e-commerce giant near Saint Petersburg early Friday, triggering a fire that sent smoke pouring over the historic city, according to local officials and an AFP reporter. Kyiv has targeted Saint Petersburg as it steps up long-range drone strikes on Russian energy, military and logistics sites …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100725,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100709\/revisions\/100725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}