St Petersburg residents freeze as power station fire knocks out heating to thousands

At least five districts of St Petersburg partially lost heating following an accident at the Avtovskaya thermal power station, the city's Energy Committee press service stated on December 29, RBC St Petersburg reported.

The incident occurred following an overnight fire in one of the production buildings at Avtovskaya power station. Information about the fire reached emergency services at 2.51 am.

Russian authorities have not provided any evidence so far that the Avtovskaya thermal power station fire was an attack, and there is no open-source confirmation linking it to sabotage or a third actor.

Russian media said heat is currently being supplied with reduced parameters to some buildings in Kirovsky, Moskovsky, Krasnoselsky, Admiralteysky and Frunzensky districts of the northern capital.

Electricity also temporarily disappeared in Kirovsky and Moskovsky districts, Russian media reported.

The heating disruption affects residents during winter temperatures as authorities work to restore full capacity at the thermal power station. St Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city with approximately 5.6mn residents, relies heavily on district heating systems during harsh winter months.

Emergency mode was previously introduced in the villages of Bereznyaki and Lesnoy in Kamchatka's Elizovsky municipal district following power grid accidents following a powerful cyclone.

Officials have only said there was a fire in a production building, followed by heating and power disruptions in several St Petersburg districts; they have not attributed the incident to either technical failure or hostile action.

Since the start of the full‑scale war, Russia has seen a pattern of unexplained “mystery fires” and utility accidents at depots, power facilities and industrial sites, which Ukrainian and some Western commentators often frame as possible sabotage, but these attributions are usually speculative and rarely backed by hard forensic detail.

Russian cities also suffer frequent, documented technical accidents in ageing district‑heating systems and power grids, a mundane infrastructure failure remains at least as plausible as covert action.