Nine killed after Russian drone strike in north-eastern Ukraine, officials say
Ukrainian officials said the attack happened just hours after Moscow and Kyiv held their first direct peace talks in years.
A Russian drone has struck a passenger bus in Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy region, killing nine people and injuring seven others.
Ukrainian officials said the attack happened on Saturday, just hours after Moscow and Kyiv held their first direct peace talks in years that failed to yield a ceasefire.
Seven people were also injured in the attack in Bilopillia, a town around six miles from the border with Russia, three of them seriously, according to local governor Oleh Hryhorov and Ukraine’s national police.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the attack as “deliberate killing of civilians” and said in a post on Telegram messaging app that “Russians could scarcely not realise what kind of vehicle they were hitting”.
He lamented the missed opportunity from the peace talks on Friday, saying that “Ukraine has long proposed this — a full and unconditional ceasefire in order to save lives”.
“Russia only retains the ability to continue killing,” Mr Zelensky added.
In Bilopillia, a period of mourning was declared through until Monday, with local community chief Yurii Zarko calling the day “Black Saturday”.
The injured were taken to a hospital in Sumy, the regional capital.
The local media outlet Suspilne said the passengers on the bus were being evacuated from the town when the strike happened. Authorities are working to identify some of the victims, most of them elderly women.
Russia’s defence ministry claimed its forces hit a military staging area in the Sumy region on Saturday morning, some 31 miles south-east of Bilopillia, without mentioning any other attacks there.
Russian and Ukrainian officials met on Friday in Istanbul in an attempt to reach a temporary ceasefire, but the talks ended after less than two hours without a breakthrough.
It was the first face-to-face dialogue between the two sides since the early weeks of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
While both sides agreed on a large prisoner swap, they remained far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting.
One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement. The Kremlin has pushed back against such a truce, which remains elusive.
Mr Zelensky said he had discussed the outcome of the Istanbul talks with US President Donald Trump and the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Poland.
In a post on X from a European leadership meeting in Albania on Friday, he urged “tough sanctions” against Moscow if it rejects “a full and unconditional ceasefire and an end to killings”.
Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such swap.
The sides also discussed a ceasefire and a meeting between their heads of state, according to the chief Ukrainian delegate, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov.
Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said both sides also agreed to provide each other with detailed ceasefire proposals, with Ukraine requesting the heads of state meeting, which Russia took under consideration.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Saturday held open the possibility of Mr Putin holding talks with Mr Zelensky, providing the agreed prisoner swap goes ahead and if Russian and Ukrainian delegations reached unspecified further “agreements”.
Mr Peskov also told reporters that Moscow will present Ukraine with a list of conditions for a ceasefire but gave no timeframe, or say what needed to happen before Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin can meet.
In Tirana, Albania, Mr Zelensky met with leaders of 47 European countries to discuss security, defence and democratic standards against the backdrop of the war, including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“Pressure on Russia must be maintained until Russia is ready to end the war,” Mr Zelensky said on X.
Mr Macron in Tirana on Saturday accused Mr Putin of “cynicism” and said that Russia has failed to “respect” ceasefire proposals backed by the US and other Western nations.
Following a call on Friday between Mr Trump, Mr Zelensky, Mr Starmer, Mr Merz, Mr Tusk and Mr Macron, the French president reiterated that a European “coalition of the willing” is ready to give Ukraine security guarantees and “put pressure on Russia”, something he said he expected Mr Trump would support.
“Faced with President Putin’s cynicism, I believe that … in fact, I’m sure that President Trump, concerned about the credibility of the United States of America, will react,” he said.
