(ST PETERSBURG) – Ukrainian drones have struck key infrastructure across Russia’s Leningrad region, including oil facilities, an Ozon warehouse, a VK data centre and a major power substation, in what is likely the largest air strike on the region since the start of the war.
The targets, selected in retaliation for Russia’s ongoing attacks on Ukrainian civilians, included an oil terminal in the port, a major oil depot, a large warehouse owned by the online marketplace Ozon, a data centre operated by the Kremlin-linked social media company VK and the strategic Vostochnaya power substation.
Yet viewers of Russian state television could easily have missed the story altogether. In the morning editions of the Vesti newscast on the Russia 1 channel, not a single word was said about the disaster, neither at 8am nor at 11am.
Instead of news about burning oil depots and power outages in Russia’s second largest city, viewers were told about riots in France, protests in Albania and endless queues at the Polish-Ukrainian border.
Only Channel One mentioned the attack, devoting just 30 seconds to the subject before moving on to other matters.
The blackout is a textbook case of Kremlin brainwashing designed to ensure ordinary Russians do not accidentally realise their own country is engulfed in flames. While depots burn, warehouses collapse and digital services crash in St Petersburg, federal television channels fill their audiences with footage of street unrest in Europe, because such things can only happen in the decadent West.
The contrast with Russia’s occupied territories in Ukraine is stark. In occupied Donetsk, the city is in a state of total infrastructure chaos. Power supply is plagued by constant outages and breakdowns. Local residents no longer dare to dream of central heating or reliable water service. The mobile network has deteriorated to such an extent that people communicate exclusively using short text messages, frantically catching sporadic bursts of signal.
Back in 2009 and 2012, when Donbas was a free and integral part of Ukraine, Beyoncé performed at the opening of the ultra-modern Donbass Arena. The city hosted Euro 2012 football matches and life pulsed with European glamour and prosperity. Now, after years of the so-called Russian world and the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s protection, the city has been left with total devastation and decline, turning into a lawless grey zone.
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