Updated ,first published
A Russian bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 33 people, with authorities describing it as a targeted strike on civilians in the key stronghold sought by Moscow.
Another 18 people were wounded in one of the largest single attacks this year, which took place on a street where police said two city buses were operating at the time of the strike. President Volodymyr Zelensky described it as a bus stop.
Images posted by police showed bodies strewn across a street littered with debris, as well as a charred shell of what appeared to be a bus.
“For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible,” regional Governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram app.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow on the attack. Russia denies targeting civilians, though it has regularly pounded Ukrainian cities, towns and other targets during its full-scale invasion that began in February 2022.
The two-day death toll from the recent wave of Russian strikes is more than 70. On Wednesday a Russian missile strike killed 22 people, including five children, in the northern Ukrainian town of Pryluky. Rescuers were searching the rubble of a residential building and at least 54 people were wounded.
Hours after the news of the bombing, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the conflict was at a “dangerous stalemate”.
“We’d love to see a negotiated settlement to this war that is permanent, enduring, and fair,” Rubio told reporters during a visit to Portugal.
He added that the US would continue to try to facilitate a settlement to end the conflict.
But Zelensky accused the US of being unwilling to help Ukraine, criticising Washington’s effort to pursue economic ties with Russia while also seeking to mediate the more than four-year war.
Speaking to reporters in Pryluky, the Ukrainian leader urged the US to accede to his requests to expand Ukraine’s access to the Starlink satellite service to help it target Russian ballistic-missile launchers.
“Open Starlink for Ukraine. You did open it when you were responding to Iran … I’ve said quite openly – give it to us, help us defend our skies and dominate there. And then Putin will sit down at the negotiating table,” he said in an emotional statement.
Ukraine has in recent months aimed to wrest the battlefield initiative from Russia, whose gains have slowed this year, but is still suffering from Moscow’s increasingly brutal air war.
“So where’s the truth here, where’s the honesty? Where’s the stalemate? … That’s called unwillingness,” he said, referring to Rubio’s comments.
“One cannot, on the one hand, negotiate with the Russians about future economic projects, whilst on the other hand say that we find ourselves in some sort of … diplomatic stalemate.”
Moscow’s forces have stepped up drone and guided-bomb strikes on Kramatorsk and other cities in Ukraine’s “fortress belt”, local officials say, the backbone of its defences in the Donetsk region.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede the rest of the region still under its control before it stops fighting, which Kyiv refuses to do. The pace of Moscow’s battlefield gains in the region has significantly slowed this year.
Filashkin said he had ordered city authorities in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, another key fortress-belt city, to halt public transport, saying “we have no right to risk” citizens’ lives.
Thursday’s attack came a day after dozens were killed in a massive Russian air attack across Ukraine, primarily targeting the country’s power grid.
Separately on Thursday, three people were killed and 14 wounded in morning drone strikes on the capital Kyiv, said Mayor Vitali Klitschko. Russian forces have unleashed frequent waves of attacks on Kyiv amid a shortage of Ukrainian air defences.
