Zelensky accuses US of inaction as Russian strikes kill over 70 in two days

Hours after the strike on the embattled city of Kramatorsk tore through two buses, Zelensky criticised Washington’s effort to pursue economic ties with Russia while also seeking to mediate the more than four-year war.

City authorities reported a new drone attack in the evening that killed two people. That brought to 35 the total death toll in the city.

Local authorities reported that a Russian guided aerial bomb killed two people in a village in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk and one person died in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk.

The attacks were launched a day after a mass Russian drone and missile assault killed dozens across Ukraine – 22 of them in a residential building in the central town of Pryluky, around 130km (80 miles) east of Kyiv.

Speaking in the early evening, Zelensky said 78 people were killed and 215 wounded by strikes in the last two days across Ukraine.

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.

‘That’s called unwillingness’

“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 US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s assertion earlier on Thursday the war is at a stalemate and that the United States would keep working toward a settlement.

“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,” Zelensky added.

Top Russian and US officials, including US special envoy Jared Kushner, have held talks about bringing a US investor into the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Ukrainian negotiators will travel to the US on Friday and Saturday for talks, Zelensky added, urging US president Donald Trump to increase sanction pressure on Russia.

Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv that he expected Kyiv’s European partners to join the talks with the US. He also said Ukrainian negotiators would raise the issue of air defences in light of near-constant Russian attacks.

Intensifying strikes

Twenty people were wounded in the Kramatorsk strike – one of the biggest single attacks of the year by Russia. Moscow has denied targeting civilians, but regularly pounds cities with missiles and drones.

“The Russians are deliberately targeting civilians. For them, a bus full of passengers is an attractive target precisely because a single strike can kill as many people as possible,” regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram app.

Images posted by officials showed bodies strewn across a street littered with debris and a charred shell of a bus. Some bodies had not been identified yet, Zelensky said, adding that the attack would not go unanswered.

Separately, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said four people were killed and 19 wounded in morning attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Water and electricity supplies were subject to interruptions which officials said would take time to put right.

Russia has unleashed relentless drone strikes against Kyiv in recent weeks, targeting warehouses, data centres and renewing its campaign against Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter.

Russian technology and AI company Yandex said it could not yet determine whether equipment at a data centre hit by a Ukrainian drone attack could be restored. Zelensky did not refer specifically to the strike on Yandex, but said Ukraine was “mirroring” Russian attacks on data centres.