Ukraine hits St Petersburg oil terminal in thousand-drone raid

Ukraine launched more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, setting the Petersburg Oil Terminal and the Ruchi oil depot in St Petersburg ablaze. One person was killed and five injured in the city. The raid came after Donald Trump accused Volodymyr Zelensky of prolonging the war — and after Washington resumed the intelligence sharing it had paused.

Trump called Ukraine's renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries "a disgrace" and wrote on Truth Social that "Zelensky doesn't care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, he doesn't want to end this war, and probably never did." In the same posts he defended his decision to waive some sanctions on Russia, explaining that he did not want to "drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table."

According to the Wall Street Journal, which cites a former Russian intelligence officer, Vladimir Putin has proposed a summit next month with Trump and Xi Jinping to negotiate an end to the conflict — an end the paper reports would favour Moscow. The proposal was made during a 9 October telephone call that also produced a deal for the United States to buy Russian diesel and help sell it on world markets.

The same night, Russian strikes on Kyiv killed a woman and hit a metro station on the left bank of the city, damaging a 25-storey residential building and a medical facility. Three more people were injured, mayor Vitali Klitschko reported. Russia carried out at least 76 strikes on Ukraine's energy, oil and gas sectors over the previous 24 hours.

Zelensky told NBC he was "very thankful" for the resumed intelligence sharing, which gives Kyiv warning of the fast-moving missiles Moscow fires in waves. He maintained that the restrictions on Starlink access had been imposed to send a "message" to Kyiv, and spoke with the American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who visited the capital earlier this month.

The diesel deal and the summit proposal came from the same telephone call.