“Bereg” report from St. Petersburg - on the opening day of SPIEF and the attack of Ukrainian drones, after which a cloud of black smoke rose over the city

“I woke up at three in the morning and thought it was a thunderstorm.”

For the first time in a long time, there is truly summer weather in St. Petersburg: it’s 20 degrees outside, the grayness and coolness are gone. The sun is shining in the sky above the city among rare clouds, against which a column of black smoke rises above the oil terminal burning on Kanonersky Island.

This is the Kirovsky district of St. Petersburg, in addition to the terminal, there are steel foundries, a tractor plant, the Northern Shipyard and port infrastructure. Interspersed with industrial facilities are residential buildings - this is one of the typical bedrooms with Soviet buildings, surrounded by greenery.

Relaxed passers-by are in no hurry; families with children relax in the parks. There are no emergency services or police around. It seems that the column of smoke occupying half the sky, due to which a deterioration in air quality was immediately recorded in St. Petersburg, is not noticed by anyone in Kirovsky.

In a park at the intersection of two avenues - Stachek and Marshal Zhukov - a woman of about 65 in a blue top and denim shorts is sitting on a bench. She enjoys the sun, squinting her eyes. The Petersburg woman seemed to have positioned herself specifically so that the black clouds of smoke would not fall into her field of vision.

An elderly man drives up to me with a speaker playing the song “Stayin' Alive” by the Bee Gees.

-Did you hear? - he asks in a calm voice and with a slight smile.

- What exactly?

“I woke up at three in the morning and thought it was a thunderstorm. Then he woke up again, but didn’t see the clouds. It turned out to be drones,” he replies and moves on.

Ukrainian drones have been flying to St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region for a long time. For example, this spring they attacked Ust-Luga, a key Russian port on the Baltic Sea and the main maritime hub for oil exports in western Russia, several times.

But the blows of June 3 stand out from others: on this day, the International Economic Forum (SPIEF) opened in St. Petersburg, which was attended by Russian and foreign politicians, officials, businessmen, journalists and bloggers.

Among the latter are misogynistic blogger Andrew Tate, who was convicted of rape, human trafficking and sexualized exploitation of minors, and right-wing activist Candace Owens. She has become famous for promoting conspiracy theories, in particular that the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron, Brigitte, is a man.

But Tate, Owens, as well as TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak, philosopher Alexander Dugin, designer Artemy Lebedev (he presented the project of the former pre-trial detention center “Kresty” at the forum), and other guests are unlikely to intend to leave the city center. And outside of it, nothing reminds of SPIEF, except for rare stands with its announcements.

“You’d think that according to the forecast, St. Petersburg will have sun all day, but the center looks like this”

On the night of June 3, the RIA Novosti agency website published an interview with the Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Beglov, in which he said that on the eve of SPIEF, the city had taken “exhaustive security measures”:

Security forces have prepared calculations of forces and means to ensure the safety of citizens and public order, as well as to ensure fire safety of facilities involved in the SPIEF.

When the Ukrainian drones reached St. Petersburg, no warning systems worked (although they were actually tested throughout the city the day before). Only early in the morning did the Bereg correspondent receive a message from the Ministry of Emergency Situations warning about a UAV attack.

In the morning, the federal media were already talking with all their might about the SPIEF stands, sometimes distracted by the escalation of the war in the Middle East. Another story on state channels was an attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on a bus in Yenakiyevo, annexed Donetsk region, traveling from Podolsk to Simferopol, in which eight civilians were killed.

But publications such as Fontanka , Rotunda and Beware, Petersburg still reported on the consequences of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ attack. Some even published videos of drones posted by St. Petersburg residents on social networks. Although for both journalists and St. Petersburg residents, from mid-January 2025 this is fraught with administrative, and in some cases, criminal liability.

In addition to the videos, opinions of citizens about the Ukrainian attack appeared in St. Petersburg chats and groups (the messages were edited, but without changing the meaning):

• “I was sleeping and didn’t hear anything. More panic."
• “Well, in principle, yes, flights are already commonplace, jokes aside. So it’s a routine, you don’t have to worry) You’ll think that according to the forecast in St. Petersburg there will be sun all day, but the center looks like this.”
• “Let me remind you that Russia has a super-weapon that can stop all these drone strikes in 20 minutes.”
• “Somehow I remember the North Military District just started with the words “otherwise Ukraine will attack us, and we will be ahead of the curve!” and “if a fight is inevitable, then strike first”... Why the hell are we being bombed? Why the hell are we continuing this for the fifth year? The boys died because the president decided that the empire should become larger? What else needs to happen for people to take to the streets demanding an end to the war???”

By lunchtime the fire at the oil terminal was extinguished. Only the fate of the fifty cats that lived on the territory of the oil terminal remains unknown, Fontanka noted.

“To prevent such attacks from happening, the SVO continues”

Many videos of flying drones, which appeared online despite the government ban, were filmed from the windows of new buildings in the Krasnoselsky district, located on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. One of the houses, the Pearl Cascade residential complex, located several kilometers from the oil terminal, was hit by drone debris and damaged the glazing on the 11th floor. Fontanka wrote that while the drones were flying over the house, its residents were hiding in the underground parking lot.

But normal life returned to Krasnoselsky quite quickly. Passers-by on the street hardly discuss what happened. Only a girl of about 12 on a scooter excitedly tells her friends: “My mother explained to me that if drones hit the house, it would completely explode!”

Her friends do not have time to answer her, because from the other side of the street there is a loud blow and an obscene exclamation. It was workers at a nearby construction site who dropped something bulky and heavy. But the girls, clearly frightened, stop discussing the consequences of the blows, just in case.

The road along the Duderhof Canal, which flows through the Krasnoselsky district, leads to the embankment of the Gulf of Finland, where a new recreation area has been built. Children play on the playgrounds or swim, adults sunbathe, talk or look thoughtfully into the distance.

Kronstadt is visible on the horizon. A column of smoke still rises into the sky from the island, the last reminder of the morning's impact.

An elderly couple in tracksuits, out for a jog, suddenly brakes. “What a horror, something is burning in Kronstadt,” says the gray-haired man. His companion does not answer. After standing for a couple more minutes, they take a deep breath and run on.

According to the BBC Russian Service, the corvette Boykiy, which was being repaired in the dock, was damaged in Kronstadt. Previously, he escorted tankers of the shadow fleet.

On the sidelines of SPIEF, the head of VTB, Andrei Kostin, said that the president had already decided to sell military equipment, for example, air defense systems, to commercial structures. And Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ attacks on St. Petersburg, said: “In order to prevent such attacks from happening, the SVO continues.”

"Shore"