Kyiv: A Russian attack targeted the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, killing at least three people and leaving many injured, officials said. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the assault, saying it underscored that Moscow has no intentions of halting the three-year war.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s secret services said they struck again in Russia’s rear, two days after a spectacular Ukrainian drone attack on air bases deep inside Russia.
In Sumy, local authorities said a barrage of rockets struck apartment buildings and a medical facility in the centre of the northeastern city, a day after direct peace talks made no progress on ending the 3-year war.
Delegations from the warring sides held talks in Istanbul on Monday and agreed to swap dead and wounded troops but their terms for ending the war remained far apart.
A 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 of explosives on the seabed overnight, damaging the bridge’s foundations 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.
It said no civilians were killed or injured in the operation. It was not possible to independently confirm the claims.
Traffic across the Kerch Bridge was halted for three hours early Tuesday morning but reopened at 9 am, official Russian social media channels said.
Zelenskyy appeals for pressure on Moscow The Ukrainian president said the attack on Sumy was a “completely deliberate strike on civilians and that one of the rockets pierced the wall of an apartment building but failed to detonate.
“The Russians brutally struck Sumy — directly targeting the city, ordinary streets — with rocket artillery,” Zelenskyy said.
“That’s all you need to know about Russia’s desire’ to end this war,” the Ukrainian president wrote in a post on Telegram.
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 front line where the war of attrition is grinding on despite US-led efforts to broker a peace deal.
A stunning Ukrainian drone attack Though Russia has a bigger army and more economic resources than Ukraine, a spectacular 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 its military prestige.
The Russian Defence Ministry acknowledged that the Ukrainian attack set several planes ablaze at two air bases but said that 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 also 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.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who now serves as deputy head of the country’s Security Council chaired by Putin, indicated on Tuesday that there would be no let-up in Russia’s invasion of its neighbour.
“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.” “Our army is pushing forward and will continue to advance,” Medvedev said, adding that “everything that needs to be blown up will be blown up, and those who must be eliminated will be.” 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, said 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, Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said Tuesday.
The delegation will meet with representatives from both major US political parties, as well as with advisors to Trump, Yermak added.
Ukrainians on the streets of 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 can’t 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 in the Kharkiv region following Putin’s promise to create a buffer zone along the border that might prevent long-range Ukrainian attacks hitting Russian soil. The city of Sumy, about 25 kilometres from the border, had a prewar population of around 250,000.
Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed Tuesday 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.
