KYIV: Russia carried out one of the biggest drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital on Friday, killing six people in Kyiv and two more in the south in strikes on energy facilities, apartment buildings and infrastructure.
A missile also struck Azerbaijan’s embassy, damaging its walls and prompting Baku to lodge a protest with Moscow.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces used 430 drones and 18 missiles and Kyiv was responding with long-range strikes.
In retaliatory strikes, Ukraine launched drone attacks on Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, damaging a refinery. Russia halted oil exports from the port, pushing international oil prices by two dollars per barrel.
Ukrainian officials said most of the Russian 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 three million.
Oil export suspended as Ukraine bombs port in retaliation
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.”
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.
“Only pressure with sanctions and strength can force Russia to end this war, a war that no one but them ever needed,” Zelensky said.
Russia’s defence ministry said its troops hit Ukrainian energy facilities and weapons-production complex with high-precision weapons to respond to Ukrainian attacks on Russia.
Flames rose over various sites in Kyiv during the night as several waves of Russian drone and missile attacks hit and photographs also showed people huddled in rubble-strewn streets outside their apartment buildings.
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 after a Ukrainian missile and drone attack.
The attack was one of the biggest on Russian oil-exporting infrastructure in recent months. It followed 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.
Global oil prices rallied by more than two per cent on supply fears after the attack.
Long-range Ukrainian air and sea drone strikes have repeatedly disrupted Russian oil infrastructure this year, targeting Baltic and Black Sea ports, a trunk pipeline system, and a number of oil refineries.
Ukraine’s military 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.
Published in Dawn, November 15th, 2025
