A Russian drone attack on a bus in northeastern Ukraine killed at least nine people and injured seven others, Ukrainian officials said Saturday, just hours after the two countries met for the first direct peace talks in three years.
While the two sides discussed a possible meeting between the two countries’ leaders, a ceasefire and agreed a prisoner swap, there was no major breakthrough and since then Russia’s aerial assault continued.
The drone attack took place Saturday morning in the city of Bilopillia in the Sumy region, local authorities said, with Oleh Hrihorov – head of Sumy’s military administration – saying that seven people were injured, three of whom were in critical condition.
“This is not just another shelling – it is a cynical war crime,” Ukraine’s National Police also said on Telegram. Police and local authorities said Russia had struck a civilian target.
Moscow has not yet responded to Ukraine’s claims it struck a civilian bus.
However, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported around the same time, citing a statement from the defense ministry, that Russian forces did strike a Ukrainian equipment staging site in the Sumy region with drones.
Russia and Ukraine have both accused each other of targeting civilians, which each denies.
An image shared by Ukraine’s national police showed a heavily damaged van bearing massive holes in the right and top side of the passenger seats. Its windows, as well as the windshield, were shattered.
Overall in Ukraine, Russian attacks killed at least 13 people and injured over 38 in the past 24 hours, which includes the attack in Sumy, Ukrainian authorities say. Two were killed in Donetsk region, and one person was killed in both Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
Friday’s talks marked the first face-to-face meeting between the two sides since the early weeks of the war.
But the meeting – which took place in Istanbul chaired by Turkey – was not attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had first proposed the talks but instead sent a junior delegation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also stayed away, having said he would not meet any other Russian official but Putin.
On Saturday, the Kremlin said that a meeting between Zelensky and Putin could happen, but only if certain conditions are met.
“Such a meeting is possible as a result of the work of the delegations of both sides in reaching certain agreements,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Peskov also spoke about preparing a list of “conditions” for a ceasefire agreement, that would then be exchanged with the Ukrainian side. Kyiv and its allies have repeatedly called for an unconditional truce and accuse Russia of deliberately holding up peace efforts.