July 4, 2026:
Last month a fire at the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, 20 kilometers west of St. Petersburg, was obvious through much of the surrounding area, including the city. The more significant target was Kronstadt Island, where Ukrainian drones attacked military facilities. Recently the Ukrainian military has carried out a sequence of successful long-range strikes in far northwest Russia, attacking the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal and military base on Kronstadt. Ukrainian long-range drones were used for this surprising and spectacular attack. Among the witnesses to this attack were those attending the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum including pro-Russia diplomats, economists, military officials and journalists. All witnessed the Ukrainian drone attack that destroyed, in a dramatic fashion, several oil storage tanks. This temporarily disrupted Russian oil exports from Baltic oil ports with Russia losing a billion dollars in oil revenue as oil exports from Baltic ports fell 40 percent.
The strikes on military targets on Kronstadt have received far less public attention despite potentially greater military significance. Ukrainian press releases were not quick to report the extent of the damage and the Russians are downplaying the importance of the attack, despite all the visible explosions and sustained fires on Kronstadt Island.
It is known to the outside world that Kronstadt Island contains a large number of military activities. Among these is the Kronstadt Marine Plant, one of Russia’s major ship repair and refurbishment centers. Here Russian warships from all the four fleets are worked on, including a corvette that entered the facility in 2023. The shipyard has also carried out complex overhauls of Kilo-class submarines from the Baltic and Black Sea fleets. Kronstadt continues to be the primary base for the Baltic Fleet, as well as the 3rd Separate Submarine Division and the 105th Brigade of Water Area Protection Ships.
As important as Kronstadt is, to the west there is the Russian port and military base of Kaliningrad. This base came about when Germany's province of East Prussia disappeared after World War II. Most of it went to Poland, but Russia retained the city of Konigsberg and its environs. They renamed the city Kaliningrad and made it a major naval base. When the Soviet Union fell apart, Russia kept Kaliningrad, and today a million Russian inhabitants live there. Currently The Kaliningrad question is a political matter concerning the status of Kaliningrad Province as a part of Russia, and its isolation from the rest of the Baltic region following the 2004 expansion of the EU/European Union.
In Western media, the region is often discussed in relation to the deployment of missile systems, initially as a response to the deployment of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia views the region as a crucial part of its ability to militarily influence or dominate the Baltic Sea’
A minority opinion calls for the annexation of Kaliningrad by Germany, which could make a financial offer Russia would find difficult to refuse. German public and political opinion of this was decidedly negative and nothing more came of it.