Drones hit Kronstadt during Putin’s forum

Ukrainian drones hit Russia's Kronstadt naval base twice in four days. The corvette Boikiy burned in dry dock. Oil terminals caught fire. Kronstadt island was sealed off. All of this while Putin hosted investors at his flagship economic forum 20 km away in St. Petersburg. The strikes, sequenced around a rejected peace offer, mark Ukraine using military force to dictate negotiation terms rather than recapture territory.

Offer, rejection, strike

On June 4, Zelenskyy published an open letter proposing face-to-face talks on neutral ground, a ceasefire during negotiations, and a prisoner exchange (Moscow Times). Putin rejected the proposal the next day at SPIEF (Russia's answer to Davos), calling the letter "boorish" and saying he saw "no point" in meeting (New Indian Express, ISW). Within 18 hours, Ukraine launched its second wave. Russia reported intercepting 144 drones over the Leningrad region alone (Fortune).

The Institute for the Study of War (a US conflict research centre) has documented Russia's own habit of launching maximum-force strikes "immediately before and after prominent peace negotiations" (ISW). Ukraine is running that playbook in reverse, making refusal costly. Zelenskyy himself framed the strikes as "long-range sanctions."

The drone war spills into EU territory

The Kronstadt raids are the sharpest example of Ukraine's expanding deep-strike capability. But a broader pattern of maritime drone warfare is escaping the Black Sea and reaching European waters.

On May 7, Greek fishermen off Lefkada hauled in an armed Ukrainian maritime drone carrying an estimated 100-200 kg of explosives (CNN Greece, news247.gr). Athens filed a formal protest; Kyiv apologised, blaming wartime conditions (Greek MFA). Greece's defence minister called the scenario "terrifying." The drone had likely been targeting a Russian shadow-fleet vessel transiting the Mediterranean, according to Greece's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the Baltic, Russia accused Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia of opening airspace to Ukrainian drones. All three rejected this as disinformation. Lithuania's foreign minister said Russia was deliberately redirecting drones into NATO airspace through GPS spoofing from Kaliningrad, where the number of detected spoofing transmitters jumped from 3 to 36 in just over a year (Defense News).

Silent partners

The countries deepest in drone co-production with Ukraine stay quiet about what those drones hit. Poland, which signed new co-production agreements in May and is fielding six classes of tactical drones built partly on Ukrainian battlefield data, issued no public statement on Kronstadt (Money.pl). Lithuania signed a full drone deal with Kyiv on May 13, covering long-range strike, maritime, and interceptor drones (President of Ukraine). Neither government commented on the strikes.

France, Germany, and the UK confirmed a summit with Zelenskyy in London for today, June 7, to establish a European negotiating track before Washington re-engages on its own terms (Eurointegration). Those three leaders sit across from a president who has just demonstrated he can hit any naval base in European Russia.

Putin's response at SPIEF was more revealing than any retaliation. "Some of them break through," he told journalists. "We need to improve our air defences" (AP/Audacy). Ukraine's FP-1 drone, the platform credited with executing the Kronstadt strikes, uses AI terrain-matching navigation that bypasses GPS jamming entirely (Euromaidanpress, DroneSense). Russia's primary electronic countermeasure no longer works against Ukraine's primary deep-strike weapon.

Whether European-co-produced components were present in the Kronstadt strike package remains unconfirmed. No one in Brussels, Berlin, or Warsaw is asking publicly. The silence is the policy.