Russian 'drone strike on Ukraine bus kills 12 people' days after Trump-Putin deal
Donald Trump said last week that Vladimir Putin had agreed to his request to pausing attacks on Ukrainian cities and towns for a week.
Russia has launched a horror drone strike on a bus in Ukraine, killing 12 people, a local official has said. Emergency services from Ukraine said a fire broke out after the strike but it was extinguished by firefighters.
Governor Oleksandr Hanzha said that another seven people were injured in the attack in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region. DTEK, the energy firm, asserted that Russian troops launched a large‑scale assault on one of its mines in the area, saying that everyone killed or injured were company workers heading home after their shift.
Read more: Putin's ally in horror 'wrath' rant as he tells Ukrainians 'overthrow or die'
Read more: Biggest plane in the world is so huge it has 32-wheel landing gear
Energy minister Denys Shmyhal said: "Today, the enemy carried out a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers in the Dnipropetrovsk region."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram: "Today's Russian strike on a bus in the Dnipropetrovsk region is a crime, a demonstrative crime, which once again shows that it is Russia that is responsible for the escalation. Evil must be stopped."
It comes as Russia stated on January 30 that US President Donald Trump had asked it to hold off on any attack on Kyiv until Feb. 1. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov made the remark a day after Trump said that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to pause strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for a week at his request.
However, there was confusion over both the timing and the scope of the supposed proposal.
Trump asked Putin to refrain from striking only Kyiv until Feb. 1 "in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations," Peskov said, appearing to contradict the scope of the agreement referenced by Trump.
"I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week," Trump said during a cabinet meeting, stressing that Ukraine is currently facing extremely cold temperatures. "And he agreed to do that. And I have to tell you, it was very nice."
