UKRAINIAN DRONES HAVE hit energy and military sites in St Petersburg as officials gathered for a flagship economic forum in the city. 

Some 20,000 guests from 130 countries are set to attend the three-day annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual event that was once Russia’s premier gathering to court Western investors and businesses.

The forum, which has often been described as the ‘Russian Davos’, kicks off today.

The strikes come a day after a barrage of Russian missiles and drones killed 23 people across Ukraine.

St Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov said “several” infrastructure facilities were damaged, but no one was killed in the attack.

Our long-range sanctions carried out by the warriors of the Security Service of Ukraine, the Unmanned Systems Forces, the Special Operations Forces, the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, and the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine have yielded good results. Important facilities… pic.twitter.com/esxYMexU8d

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) June 3, 2026

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said drones hit the St Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Kronstadt military base in the city, the latest in a series of retaliatory attacks that Kyiv calls “long-range sanctions”.

“Ukraine’s plan for long-range sanctions is being implemented exactly as needed to bring peace closer,” he said on social media, posting a video of an oil depot ablaze.

The attacks forced St Petersburg’s main airport to close for hours overnight.

Ukrainian officials said the attack was aimed at disrupting the three-day gathering, which Russian president Vladimir Putin will attend and make a keynote address at on Friday.

“The Petersburg forum is opening with a nice plume of black smoke in the background after Ukrainian strikes,” Sergiy Sternenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian defence minister wrote on social media.

Пітєрський форум відкривається із гарним чорним димом на тлі після українських ударів. pic.twitter.com/fDqeIPH7DV

— Serhii Sternenko (@sternenko) June 3, 2026

It was accompanied by a video of delegates walking to the venue with smoke visible in the background.

Donetsk

Separately, a drone strike killed seven people and wounded 11 as it hit a bus in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine.

The bus was hit in the Donetsk region as it travelled from Moscow to Simferopol in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014.

“In Yenakiyevo, a UAV attacked a Moscow–Simferopol coach; according to preliminary reports, seven civilians were killed,” Denis Pushilin, the head of the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Donetsk region said on Telegram.

“A further 11 people sustained injuries of varying severity, and all are receiving the necessary medical care,” he added.

Russia and Ukraine have traded regular aerial assaults since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, deploying waves of missiles and drones in tit-for-tat strikes.

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Kherson

Meanwhile, a Russian drone strike killed a woman in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, according to regional authorities.

An 86-year-old woman “sustained fatal injuries as a result of a drone attack”, Yaroslav Shanko, head of the Kherson City Military Administration, said on Telegram.

Russia said its air defences intercepted 354 Ukrainian drones across multiple regions, including areas bordering Ukraine and annexed Crimea overnight.

The Russian defence ministry said the drones were downed over Belgorod, Kursk and other western regions, as well as near Moscow and over the Sea of Azov.

On Tuesday, Ukraine said that Russia had fired 73 missiles and 656 drones in one of the largest attacks of the war, overwhelming parts of its air defence and damaging cities including Kyiv and Dnipro.

With reporting from © AFP 2026 

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