6 killed, dozens injured in Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv overnight

russian federation launched a heavily drone on and missile assail on ukrayina early on Friday, killing six people in Kyiv and two more in the south in strikes on energy facilities, apartment buildings and infrastructure, Ukrainian officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Russian forces used 430 drones and 18 missiles, making the attack one of the biggest on the capital so far. Kyiv was responding with long-range strikes, he said, urging allies to toughen sanctions on Russia.

The air force said most of the drones and missiles were shot down, but officials said falling debris and fires damaged highrise apartments, a school, a medical facility and administrative buildings across nine districts in the city of about three million.

Timur Tkachenko, the head of Kyiv's military administration, said that at least 34 people were injured across the city, including two children, and a pregnant woman was among nine people treated in hospital.

Partial power cuts were announced in the central Kyiv region, in the southern Odesa region, and in the Donetsk region in the east, the energy ministry said.

Pictures showed flames rising over the city at various sites, as residents huddled in rubble-strewn streets outside apartment buildings after the attack.

Anastasia, 29, described the moment her apartment block was hit:

"At that moment you don't know what to do first: save yourself, your child, or run to help people, because so many people were screaming and needed help," she said.

The governor of the Kyiv region outside the capital said drone and missile attacks injured six people, including a seven-year-old child, and triggered several fires.

A 55-year-old man in Bila Tserkva suffered burns and was hospitalized, the head of the regional military administration, Mykola Kalashnyk, said.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022, leaving the two countries locked in a state of all-out war ever since.

Zelenskyy said the Azerbaijani Embassy was hit by debris from an Iskander missile.

Azerbaijan summoned Russian ambassador Mikhail Yevdokimov as a protest.

In a statement, Azerbaijan's foreign ministry said the blast from the missile destroyed part of the embassy's perimeter wall and caused serious damage to the diplomatic compound. No one was hurt.

Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk temporarily suspended oil exports, equivalent to 2.2 million barrels per day, or two per cent of global supply, on Friday, according to industry sources, after what local authorities said was a Ukrainian drone attack.

Russian officials said Friday's attack had also damaged a docked ship, apartment buildings and an oil depot in Novorossiysk, injuring three of the vessel's crew members.

The attack, one of the biggest on Russian oil-exporting infrastructure in recent months, comes after Ukraine in August stepped up strikes on Russian oil refineries in an attempt to degrade Moscow's ability to finance its war.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which exports oil from Kazakhstan through the neighbouring Yuzhnaya Ozereevka terminal, suspended oil loadings for a few hours and then resumed them when the air alert was lifted, sources said.

According to three industry sources, the Ukrainian attack hit two oil berths at the Sheskharis terminal. Local officials later said that a fire at an oil depot at the terminal had been extinguished.

Reuters could not verify the accounts of the attacks and there was no immediate comment from Ukrainian officials.

Russian crude oil shipments via Novorossiysk's Sheskharis terminal totalled 3.22 million tonnes, or 761,000 barrels a day, in October, according to industry sources. For the first 10 months of the year, the figure was 24.716 million tonnes.

Two of the sources said the Sierra Leone-flagged Arlan oil tanker was also hit during the attack.

Three injured crew members of the damaged boat were being treated in hospital, said Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of the Krasnodar region, where Novorossiysk is located.

"Overnight, more than 170 people and 50 pieces of equipment dealt with the aftermath of the attack, quickly extinguishing fires and assisting residents," he said.

Zelenskyy said on Friday that his troops had used long-range Ukrainian "Long Neptune" cruise missiles on targets in Russia overnight, adding that such strikes were getting more successful all the time. He did not mention any targets.

The missiles, used successfully in combat tests in March, have a range of 1,000 km, Zelenskyy said at the time.

Overall, the Russian Defence Ministry said Friday that its air defence forces shot down 216 Ukrainian drones overnight in a number of Russian regions and Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

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