A Russian drone strike on a bus carrying miners killed at least 12 people, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced new peace talks amid uncertainty over a Russian suspension of attacks on energy infrastructure. First deputy prime minister Denys Shmyhal said the strike in the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region was a “cynical and targeted” attack on energy workers. The bus was driving about 65km (40 miles) from the frontline, police said.
A second round of talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials on a US-drafted plan to end the war did not go ahead on Sunday in Abu Dhabi as scheduled and Zelenskyy said it would instead take place this Wednesday and Thursday. Ukraine was ready for “substantive” talks, he said. He did not give a reason for the delay, and neither Moscow nor the US confirmed the new dates. Russia has continued attacking Ukraine throughout the negotiating process.
An earlier drone attack in the region overnight killed a man and a woman in the central city of Dnipro, regional military administration head Oleksandr Ganzha said in a post on Telegram. A drone also struck a maternity hospital in the southern Zaporizhzhia region on Sunday, wounding at least seven people including two women receiving a medical examination.
The Kremlin said on Friday it had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure until Sunday at the request of Donald Trump, and Kyiv said it would reciprocate. Ukraine said the suspension was supposed to last until the following Friday. The countries have not reported major strikes on their energy systems in recent days, though Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia was attacking railway infrastructure and other logistics. He also said its forces had attacked the power grid in two cities across the Dnipro river from the front line, but did not explicitly accuse Russia of breaking the energy ceasefire.
Ukraine faced a new cold snap on Sunday with temperatures hovering around minus 15C (5F) and expected to drop even further on Monday to well below -20C in Kyiv. Grid operator Ukrenergo said late on Saturday that planned outages would be in force throughout the entire country.
Ukraine’s defence minister thanked Elon Musk after the world’s richest person said efforts to stop Russia from using Starlink satellites for drone attacks seemed to have worked. “The first steps are already delivering real results ... Thank you for standing with us,” defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Sunday. “You are a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people.”
Russian forces gained control over the village of Zelene in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and the settlement of Sukhetske in the Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. The Russian state Tass news agency also quoted it as saying Russian forces hit facilities of transport infrastructure used in the interests of the Ukrainian army.
Tens of thousands of Czechs rallied in Prague on Sunday to support the country’s pro-Ukrainian president, who is locked in a dispute with the government’s nationalist billionaire leader Andrej Babis. Organisers from the independent Million Moments for Democracy movement claim up to 90,000 people attended the demonstration, where some participants waved Czech, European and Ukrainian flags.
