(Reuters) – A Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets on Wednesday, killing nine people in a wave of attacks on civilian infrastructure in central, southern and eastern areas of the country, Kyiv officials said.
Both Russia and Ukraine are under pressure from the United States to demonstrate progress towards ending the war that began with Russia’s 2022 full-blown invasion amid warnings that U.S. President Donald Trump could walk away from peacemaking.
Ukrainian officials arrived in London, even as most other big power foreign ministers pulled out, to hold talks about ways to achieve a full ceasefire as a first step towards peace.
Russia fired a total of 134 attack drones at targets in Ukraine overnight, Kyiv’s air force said.
There was no immediate comment from Russia.
“The Russians attacked a bus with employees of the enterprise who were on their way to work in Marhanets,” Mykola Lukashuk, head of the Dnipropetrovsk region council in south-central Ukraine, said on Telegram.
Marhanets lies on the Ukrainian-controlled north bank of the Dnipro’s dried-up reservoir that separates the warring sides.
Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Serhiy Lysak said nine people were killed in the attack. Most of the injured were hospitalised, he added.
Lysak posted photos of a wrecked bus with shattered windows and a gaping hole in its roof.
Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office said there were 43 people injured in the attack.
“Ukraine’s proposal to implement a ceasefire on civilian objects remains in place. What is missing is Russia’s willingness to accept it,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said on X regarding the Marhanets attack.
Elsewhere, an energy plant that provides electricity to the city of Kherson near southern front lines was destroyed in an artillery and drone attack, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Ukraine’s emergency service also reported a drone strike on the Synelnykivskyi district in the Dnipropetrovsk region that injured two people and sparked a fire at an agricultural enterprise.
Russia further fired drones into the central region of Poltava, injuring at least six people, its governor said.
A drone attack on civilian infrastructure in the suburbs of the Black Sea port city of Odesa injured two people and sparkedseveral fires, regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Russian drone salvoes also set off large-scale fires in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, in the northeast, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on Telegram.
Seven private houses, a storage building and an outbuilding were also damaged by drones hitting the Kyiv capital region, where a fire also broke out in a restaurant complex, its regional governor said.
(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne and Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk; Editing by Chris Reese and Gerry Doyle)
