Kyiv: A Russian rocket attack targeted the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy Tuesday, killing at least four people and wounding 25, officials said. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the assault, saying it underscored that Moscow has no intentions of halting the 3-year-old war.
The attack came a day after direct peace talks in Istanbul made no progress on ending the fighting. Local authorities said the barrage of rockets struck apartment buildings and a medical facility in the centre of Sumy.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s secret services said they struck inside Russia again, two days after a spectacular Ukrainian drone attack on air bases deep inside the country.
Vital bridge to Crimea
The Ukrainian Security Service, known by its acronym SBU, claimed it damaged the foundations of the Kerch Bridge linking Russia and illegally annexed Crimea — a key artery for Russian military supplies in the war.
The SBU said it detonated 1,100 kilograms (2,400 pounds) of explosives on the seabed overnight, in an operation that took several months to set up. It was the third Ukrainian strike on the bridge since Russia’s invasion of its neighbour in February 2022, the SBU said.
“The bridge is now effectively in an emergency condition,” the SBU claimed.
The agency said no civilians were killed or injured in the operation. It was not possible to independently confirm those claims.
Traffic across the Kerch Bridge was halted for three hours early Tuesday, but it reopened at 9 am, official Russian social media channels said. It closed for a second time at 3:20 p.m. and reopened again after two and a half hours.
Zelenskyy appeals for pressure on Moscow
The Ukrainian president called the attack on Sumy a “completely deliberate” strike on civilians.
“That’s all you need to know about Russia’s desire to end this war,” the Ukrainian president wrote on social media.
Zelenskyy appealed for global pressure and “decisive action from the United States, Europe and everyone in the world who holds power.” Without it, he said, Russian President Vladimir Putin “will not agree even to a ceasefire.”
The war has killed more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according to the United Nations, as well as tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides along the roughly 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line where the fighting grinds on despite US-led efforts to broker a peace deal.
Stunning Ukrainian drone attack
Though Russia has a bigger army and more economic resources than Ukraine, the Ukrainian drone attack over the weekend damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, Ukrainian officials said, touting it as a serious blow to the Kremlin’s strategic arsenal and military prestige.
The Russian Defence Ministry acknowledged that the Ukrainian attack set several planes ablaze at two air bases but said the military repelled attempted attacks on three other air bases.
Both Zelenskyy and Putin have been eager to show US President Donald Trump that they share his ambition to end the fighting — and avoid possible punitive measures from Washington. Ukraine has accepted a US-proposed ceasefire, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it. Putin has made it clear that any peace settlement has to be on his terms.
Delegations from the warring sides agreed Monday to swap dead and wounded troops, but their conditions for ending the war remained far apart.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who now serves as deputy head of the country’s Security Council, chaired by Putin, indicated Tuesday that there would be no let-up in Russia’s invasion.
“The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else’s delusional terms but for ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction” of Ukraine’s government, he said.
In an apparent comment on the latest Ukrainian strikes, he declared that “retribution is inevitable.”
A Putin-Zelenskyy-Trump meeting unlikely’ soon, Moscow says
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to suggestions that a face-to-face meeting between Putin, Trump and Zelenskyy could break the deadlock, saying the possibility was “unlikely in the near future.”
Meanwhile, a senior Ukrainian delegation led by First Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko has travelled to Washington for talks about defence, sanctions and postwar recovery, said Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office.
The delegation will meet with representatives from both major US political parties, as well as with advisers to Trump, Yermak added.
Ukrainians in Kyiv welcomed the strikes on Russian air bases but were gloomy about prospects for a peace agreement.
“Russia has invested too many resources in this war to just … stop for nothing,” said serviceman Oleh Nikolenko, 43.
His wife, Anastasia Nikolenko, a 38-year-old designer, said diplomacy cannot stop the fighting. “We need to show by force, by physical force, that we cannot be defeated,” she said.
Russia recently expanded its attacks on Sumy and the Kharkiv region following Putin’s promise to create a buffer zone along the border that might prevent long-range Ukrainian attacks from hitting Russian soil. Sumy, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the border, had a prewar population of around 250,000.
The Russian Defence Ministry claimed its troops had taken the Ukrainian village of Andriivka, close to the border in the Sumy region. Ukraine made no immediate comment on the claim, which could not be independently verified.
Russia also fired rocket artillery at Chystovodivka village in the Kharkiv region, killing two people and injuring three others, regional Gov.
AP
