Ukraine renews drone attack on Putin’s home city after he turns down peace talks

Ukraine has launched a drone attack on Vladimir Putin’s home city – a day after the Russian leader refused an offer to meet Volodymyr Zelensky for peace talks.

People living in St Petersburg were told to barricade themselves inside during the large-scale aerial assault.

Although no casualties were reported, the renewed attack on Russia’s second-largest city is the latest embarrassing blow to Putin’s efforts to distance the war from Russian daily life.

Zelensky underscored Kyiv’s growing ability to hit deep inside Russia, writing on X: ‘It is time to end this war. But Russia’s ruler wants to keep fighting.

‘Last night, our drones covered a distance of about 1,000 kilometers to the St. Petersburg region – to the enemy navy’s arsenals and a base in Kronstadt.

‘Russia must end its war and stop its attacks on life. Any manifestation of injustice against Ukraine will receive a just response. I thank our warriors for their precision.’

Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone strikes on each other in recent months as US-led diplomatic efforts to end the war, now in its fifth year, remain stalled over the conflict in the Middle East.

Ukraine fired hundreds of drones at Russia early Saturday, leaving one person dead and setting an oil depot ablaze on the final day of the country’s flagship economic forum in St Petersburg.

The strikes come a day after Putin rejected Zelensky’s proposal for a meeting.

Russian air defences intercepted a total of 376 drones ‘over Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Kursk, Leningrad, Novgorod, Oryol, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Smolensk, Tver, and Tula regions, Moscow region, Crimea Republic, Abkhazia Republic, and over the waters of the Azov and Black Seas’, the Russian defence ministry said.

St Petersburg governor Alexander Beglov issued a rare call for residents to stay indoors during the attack.

The attacks sparked a fire at an oil depot in the southern town of Ust-Labinsk, while drone debris killed a man in the western Tver region, according to local officials.

Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) – an event dubbed ‘Russia’s Davos’ – Putin said he saw ‘no point’ in meeting the Ukrainian leader until a possible peace deal had been agreed.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiga heaped further criticism on the Russian leader.

‘Putin lost his chance to get out of his failed war,’ he said.

‘Russia will still have to accept a diplomatic solution but the terms will be far worse.’

Hundreds of thousands have been killed since Putin launched his full-scale offensive – which he calls a ‘special military operation’ – in February 2022.

Swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine have been destroyed and millions forced from their homes in the four-year campaign Moscow hoped would have toppled Kyiv within a matter of days.

Russia renewed its strikes on Ukraine early Saturday.

In southern Ukraine, authorities found the bodies of two men who had been unaccounted for following an attack on Zaporizhzhia, according to regional governor Ivan Fedorov.

Russian drone and artillery attacks in Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region killed one person and left three others wounded, regional governor Oleksandr Ganzha wrote on Telegram.

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