Reported drone strike on Vostochnaya substation leaves about 20,000 without power near St. Petersburg

What happened

Overnight on 18 October 2026, St. Petersburg and Leningrad region came under a drone attack. Russian outlets ASTRA and Baza reported that the Vostochnaya electrical substation in the village of Novosergievka, Vsevolozhsk district, near the boundary with St. Petersburg, was struck, based on open-source analysis of eyewitness footage and statements from local officials. Damage to energy infrastructure caused emergency power outages across the region. Local authorities said approximately 20,000 people living in 50 apartment buildings were affected by the outage, and residents in other districts also reported disruptions.

The same attack reportedly struck a VKontakte data centre in the same village. VK's press office confirmed a drone had attacked the facility but said its services remained available. Fires were also reported at fuel facilities and an Ozon distribution centre, and four people were reported injured across the region. The extent of damage to the substation was not reported.

Contributing factors

The reports attribute the substation damage to a drone strike during the wider attack. The source does not describe protective measures at the substation or the cause of the outage in technical terms.

Lessons learned

1. Substations and data centres in areas exposed to attack need physical protection, hardened design and spare capacity so that a single strike does not cut supply to thousands of customers.
2. Operators should hold tested plans for restoring supply from alternative transformers or feeders when a substation is disabled.
3. Operators should give customers and authorities prompt, accurate status updates during emergency outages, and should record damage assessments as they become available.

More lessons on electrical protection and isolation, outages, backup supply and restoration, from every incident on the register.

Source

glavnoe.in.ua