Russia launched a heavy drone and missile attack on Ukraine 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 Zelenskiy said Russian forces used 430 drones and 18 missiles and Kyiv was responding with long-range strikes. It was one of the biggest attacks on the capital so far.
Ukrainian officials said most of the drones and missiles were shot down, but falling debris and fires damaged high-rise apartments, a school, a medical facility and administrative buildings across nine districts in the city of about 3 million.
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.
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City officials said that six people were killed in Kyiv, which was the focus of the attacks. Russian drones also struck the Black Sea city of Chornomorsk, killing two people, the regional governor said.
Ukraine, meanwhile, launched one of the biggest on Russian oil-exporting infrastructure in recent months.
Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk temporarily suspended oil exports – equivalent to 2.2 million barrels per day, or 2 per cent of global supply – on Friday, according to industry sources, after a Ukrainian missile and drone attack.
It follows a ramping-up of Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries since August, part of an attempt by Kyiv to degrade Moscow’s ability to finance its war.
Ukraine’s general staff said its forces had fired Neptune cruise missiles and used various types of strike drones in the attack on Novorossiysk “as part of efforts to reduce the military and economic potential of the Russian aggressor”.
Ukraine said it separately struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Saratov region and a fuel storage facility in nearby Engels overnight.
Mr Zelenskiy, meanwhile, said Russia’s attack, which struck other regions of the country, was targeting Kyiv.
“A specially calculated attack to cause as much harm as possible to people and civilians,” Mr Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram.
He added the Azerbaijan embassy was damaged by fragments of an Iskander missile.
Fifteen people were taken to hospital, including one man in critical condition and a pregnant woman, after a series of powerful explosions sounded in the city and airs defences were activated.
City authorities warned that power and water outages were possible.
Officials said falling debris and fires damaged high-rise apartment buildings, a school, a medical facility and administrative buildings in areas scattered throughout the city of three million people.
“The Russians are hitting residential buildings. There are a great many damaged multistorey apartment buildings, in practically every district,” Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He said both drones and missiles had been deployed and emergency crews were dispatched to several neighbourhoods.
Pictures posted on social media showed different sites in flames and residents gathering in rubble-strewn streets outside apartment buildings.
The governor of Kyiv region outside the capital said drone and missile attacks injured one person and triggered fires in several localities.
Ukraine’s air force reported that Russian drones and guided bombs were targeting several other regions.
The strike came as European Union officials warned this week that Ukraine must continue to crack down on corruption following a major scandal that has put top nuclear energy officials under scrutiny.
But they also offered assurances that aid will continue to flow as Kyiv strains to hold back Russia’s invasion.
Meanwhile, Russia’s FSB security service said on Friday that it had thwarted a Ukrainian plot to assassinate an unnamed top Russian government official and accused Kyiv of planning similar attacks in other parts of the country.
The FSB said in a statement that the Ukrainian plot had aimed to kill the official when they visited their relatives’ graves at a Moscow cemetery.
Reuters could not independently verify the FSB’s assertion, but Ukraine has targeted Russian military and other officials inside Russia since Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. – Reuters
