indah-permata
At least 10 people were killed on Saturday in a fresh exchange of Russian and Ukrainian attacks, as Washington pressed for negotiations to end the four-year war and Moscow's top diplomat blamed Europe for holding the process back. Russian strikes killed four people inside Ukraine, while Ukrainian drone attacks killed six in Russian territory and in the occupied part of Ukraine, according to officials on both sides.
In Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, two women were killed after they were trapped beneath the rubble of their home in an overnight barrage of drones and missiles, the regional military administration said. Ukrainian firefighters were later shown surveying a damaged local market, and medics carried an injured person away from the site of destroyed private houses struck by a Russian drone, in images that underlined the toll on residential neighbourhoods far from the front line.
A separate Russian attack claimed two lives in the northeastern city of Sumy, according to local officials. Together, the Zaporizhzhia and Sumy deaths account for the four fatalities reported in Ukraine on Saturday, and both sites were hit during the same overnight window that saw Russian drones and missiles cross deep into the country's interior.
Writing on X on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attacks showed no sign of de-escalation. "Russia is escalating every single day," he wrote, adding that if Moscow had chosen to make its strikes more brutal, "the world must choose stronger responses to keep the war from spreading further." The warning came as Ukraine's own military confirmed it had pressed a campaign of long-range drone strikes against Russian oil refineries and industrial targets.
In Russia's southern Krasnodar region, a Ukrainian drone attack killed three people and wounded two, regional Governor Veniamin Kondratyev wrote on Telegram. He said the attack had also sparked fires at two industrial facilities, and Russian media later reported that an oil refinery was among the targets. Moscow-installed regional head Yevgeny Balitsky, meanwhile, said Ukrainian strikes overnight into Saturday killed three people in the Russian-occupied portion of the Zaporizhzhia region, according to Russian state media — the second wave of deaths in the same province where Russian missile and drone fire was already fatal overnight.
The strikes were not confined to the ground. Russia's Defence Ministry said Russian forces hit a cargo vessel carrying military supplies near the Black Sea port of Odesa on Saturday, and that a logistics hub in Odesa was also struck. The claim, which could not be independently verified, comes at a sensitive moment for Black Sea shipping and carries implications far beyond the immediate casualties.
Those shipping routes were already under strain this week. On Friday, Russian strikes on Kyiv killed seven people, injured 58 and forced a halt to production at Ukraine's largest steelmaker. ArcelorMittal said on Friday that a series of strikes in recent days had killed five workers and badly damaged one of its sites. Ukraine's steel industry had previously accounted for about 15 percent of the country's exports, so the damage carries a direct economic cost alongside the human one.
Ukraine, for its part, kept up pressure on Russia's energy sector. Ukrainian forces hit oil refineries in the cities of Perm and Novoshakhtinsk on Friday, causing a temporary halt to operations at both sites, in a campaign that has made refining capacity a recurring target in retaliation for Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Diplomacy, meanwhile, produced no breakthrough. Zelenskyy said on Friday that Washington had proposed a meeting of Russian, Ukrainian and US officials in the United Arab Emirates. "We are awaiting a proposal from the United States regarding the date, and the United States has suggested the Emirates as a possible location," he said during a briefing on WhatsApp. The remarks pointed to a proposal still in transit rather than a scheduled summit.
He added that Egypt, India, Turkiye and representatives from the Middle East were taking part in talks on unblocking shipping in the Black Sea, while other countries had submitted their own proposals. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that every settlement proposal remained on the table, though Moscow was still weighing which option served its interests best. He said Russia was prepared to return to talks with Kyiv following last week's parliamentary elections, but accused Ukraine of attempting to strike the capital and of attacking polling stations during the vote.
Russia's position hardened further on Saturday, when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov addressed the UN General Assembly and accused Europe of obstructing the negotiations Washington favours. "Europe is doing everything it can to thwart peace talks in which the [Donald] Trump administration is interested," he said. Lavrov also insisted that Moscow would meet its military goals "no matter the circumstances," adding that the aims of the "special military operation" would be achieved and that peaceful life would return.
The contrast between the diplomatic and military tracks was stark. Talks are being arranged in the Gulf, mediators are working to restore Black Sea shipping, and settlement proposals are said to remain open — yet the weekend's violence killed at least 10 people, halted refinery and steel output, and struck a supply vessel near a major port. Both sides are signalling openness to talks while continuing to escalate, leaving the location and timing of a meeting, and any verifiable halt to the strikes, as the next tests of whether the peace process can move faster than the war.
Comments (0)