By Yurii Kovalenko and Herbert Villarraga

KYIV (Reuters) - Russia launched dozens of drones and ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight in one of the biggest combined aerial attacks on the Ukrainian capital of the three-year war, damaging several apartment buildings and injuring 15 people.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a social media post it had been a "tough night" for Ukraine, and called for new international sanctions to pressure Moscow into agreeing to a ceasefire.

In the early hours of the morning, Reuters witnesses saw and heard successive waves of drones flying over Kyiv, and a series of explosions jolted the city. The capital also reverberated with the sound of anti-aircraft batteries trying to bring down the drones.

Pictures from Reuters photographers showed an orange-red glow lighting up the city as plumes of smoke blew across the horizon. On the top floor of one apartment building, smoke and flames billowed out of a balcony window as firefighters tried to approach.

By daybreak, government officials reported damage in six districts of the Ukrainian capital, and a total so far of 15 people wounded. Three required hospitalisation. Two of the injured were children, the officials said.

The Kyiv city military administration described it as one of the most massive combined drone and missile attacks of the war.

The attacks come as U.S. President Donald Trump is encouraging Russia and Ukraine to sit down for ceasefire talks to end the war, but has pushed back against a European plan to impose new sanctions on Russia.

Halyna Tatarchuk, a 63-year-old pensioner, was in her apartment when a drone hit the building. She and her husband were in the corridor, away from the windows. "That saved us," she said.

She fled to a bomb shelter at a nearby school, then at daylight returned to inspect the damage. All the windows of her apartment were smashed, and the floor was covered in fragments of glass.

"I'd like Trump to see this," she said, standing in her kitchen. "What's he doing? Can he really not see this? ...It's the destruction of a people, they are just destroying us," she said, referring to the Russian military.

In the street below her third-floor windows, trees had been splintered by the blast and car windows were smashed. Municipal workers were using a mini-excavator to clear up debris from the ground.

CEASEFIRE TALKS

Ukraine's air force said that Russia had fired 14 ballistic missiles at targets across Ukraine overnight and launched 250 long-range drones, with Kyiv the main target.

The strikes followed several days of Ukrainian drone strikes - some 800 attacks - on targets inside Russia, including the capital Moscow.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had vowed on Friday to respond to those attacks.

Hours before the drones and missiles reached Kyiv, Russia and Ukraine had exchanged several hundred prisoners, in a move that Trump suggested could be a prelude to progress on peace talks.

Russian negotiators said they were preparing a memorandum that would serve as the starting point for the next round of peace talks. No date or venue has been agreed.

"Russia still has not sent its 'peace memorandum.' Instead, it is sending deadly drones and missiles at civilians," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote in a post on the Telegram social media platform.

In his own post on Telegram, Zelenskiy said the Russian attacks were evidence to the rest of the world that Russia is the obstacle to peace.

"Only additional sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire."

There was no immediate comment from Russia on the overnight attacks.

Russia has said it is committed to seeking a peaceful settlement to the conflict. But it says Kyiv needs to accept the reality that Russia controls part of its territory, and it must not be used as a bridgehead for Western states to threaten Russia.

On Saturday, Russia's Defence Ministry said its troops had captured the settlements of Stupochki, Otradne and Loknia in Ukraine's Donetsk and Sumy regions.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield report.

(Reporting by Gleb Garanich, Serhiy Karazy, Thomas Peter and Pavel Polityuk; Writing by Ron Popeski and Christian Lowe; Editing by Sharon Singleton)

Posted by: AAngeles