A Russian attack on a civilian bus in Ukraine’s northeast Sumy region has killed nine people and injured four others, the Ukrainian military has said.
“Medics and rescuers have been urgently sent to the scene,” Ihor Tkachenko, head of Sumy’s military administration, said on Telegram.
Russia‘s TASS state news agency said the defence ministry had claimed Russian forces struck a Ukrainian military equipment staging area in the Sumy region with drones.
The deaths prompted a strong response from Ukraine‘s National Police on the Telegram messaging app: “This is not just another shelling – it is a cynical war crime”.
Ukraine’s police posted photos of a dark blue passenger van nearly destroyed, with the roof torn off and the windows blown out.
The attack comes hours after Russia and Ukraine held their first direct peace talks in three years.
The meeting of Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkey on Friday failed to broker a temporary ceasefire.
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Set up at short notice at Vladimir Putin‘s behest, he declined a challenge from Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet him in person and instead sent relatively junior representatives.
A source in the Ukrainian negotiation team told Sky News that Russia threatened “eternal war” during the talks.
They said the Russians were not ready to talk about technical details of a ceasefire and were waiting for superiors to approve them.
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Ukraine war Q&A on Putin and peace talks
Both countries said they agreed to trade 1,000 prisoners of war each in what would be the biggest such exchange yet of the conflict.
But Kyiv wants the West to impose tighter sanctions unless Moscow accepts a proposal from Donald Trump for a 30-day ceasefire.
This story originally appeared on Skynews
