St Petersburg is beautiful and quite lovely. Or well, I don't know now, but it was before the war.
To be honest I've watched a ton of Russian YouTube content and on these videos the Russian cities doesn't seem affected. Just forget your visa/mastercard
You've been to the city center. The outskirts are dull even by Russian standards. Because of the soil there, they tend to build high-rise residential buildings spaced by 500m to 1km. Streets run in-between, there are occasional malls and that's it.
To be honest I've watched a ton of Russian YouTube content and on these videos the Russian cities doesn't seem affected. Just forget your visa/mastercard