Russian state television largely ignored Ukraine’s largest drone attack of the war on St. Petersburg and the surrounding Leningrad Oblast, devoting far more airtime to protests in France, the BBC’s Russian Service reported.
A review of 20 news broadcasts on Rossiya 1, Channel One and NTV on Oct. 18 and the morning of Oct. 19 found no dedicated reports on the attack across the three federal channels.
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Instead, presenters delivered brief updates lasting less than a minute, and none of the channels mentioned the strikes in their morning broadcasts on Oct. 19.
The attack on Oct. 18 set fire to the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, Ozon’s logistics center and an oil depot, while also damaging a VK data center, according to Russian media reports. Fires also broke out at industrial warehouses in St. Petersburg’s Kolpinsky district.
Leningrad Oblast Governor Alexander Drozdenko said Russian air defenses shot down 145 drones over the region, the highest number recorded there during Russia’s war against Ukraine. Authorities reported one person killed and 15 injured across St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast.
The strikes also damaged residential buildings, cars and power lines in Leningrad Oblast, causing electricity disruptions. A bridge in St. Petersburg was also hit, with the Ukrainian Telegram channel identifying it as the Finland Railway Bridge and reporting damage to the surface of its lifting section.
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Despite the scale of the attack, Rossiya 1’s Vesti did not mention the strikes in its morning or afternoon broadcasts on Oct. 18. The channel first reported on them in its 5 p.m. broadcast, framing the attack as grounds for retaliatory strikes against Ukraine.
A segment on Vesti Nedeli later mentioned the fatality in a report lasting about 30 seconds and repeated allegations that Baltic states had helped Ukraine carry out the attacks. Dedicated coverage of St. Petersburg appeared only on Rossiya 24 and the regional program Vesti. St. Petersburg.
By contrast, Russian state television repeatedly covered protests in France, including demonstrations in Paris.
Rossiya 1 and Rossiya 24 aired the same report several times about what they described as the “storming of the mayor’s office” in Paris, claiming France had been “on fire for almost a month.”
A Vesti Nedeli report titled “France in Flames” lasted nearly seven minutes – longer than the combined coverage of the St. Petersburg attack on Rossiya 1, Channel One and NTV.
Channel One gave the attack less than a minute of coverage but devoted 9.5 minutes to France. NTV’s Segodnya opened two broadcasts with reports on the attack, each lasting about a minute. In its weekly roundup, Itogi Nedeli, NTV devoted about 30 seconds to St. Petersburg within a broader report on Ukraine, compared with 7.5 minutes on France.
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