Nine killed in Russian attack on bus in Ukraine

Nine people have been killed and more than 40 injured after a Russian drone hit a bus transporting workers in eastern Ukraine, officials say.

The attack occurred on Wednesday morning in the south-central city of Marhanets in the Dnipropetrovsk region, across a river from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “an egregiously brutal attack – and an absolutely deliberate war crime” on an “ordinary bus…clearly a civilian target.”

He said most of the injured were women who worked at a mining and processing plant.

The strike came as top Trump officials pulled out of talks in London between UK, Europe and Ukraine aimed at securing a ceasefire.

The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff had been due to attend, but were later announced to have pulled out. They were replaced by Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Gen Keith Kellogg, who referred to Wednesday’s talks as “technical meetings”.

Zelensky said on Wednesday the Ukrainian delegation was continuing talks with partners.

“Ukraine has repeatedly said that it does not exclude any of the formats that can lead to a ceasefire and, subsequently, to real peace. Stopping the killings is the number one task,” he said.

He shared pictures of the bus attack, which showed the vehicle with a hole punctured through its roof, doors off their hinges and glass scattered across its floor.

Russia has not commented on the attack.

There have also been drone strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city located in the country’s east, for a second consecutive day.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared a 30-hour ceasefire for Easter Sunday. Ukraine had said it would mirror Russia’s actions. Each side accused the other of breaking the truce.

Last month, Moscow came up with a long list of conditions in response to a full ceasefire that had been agreed by the US and Ukraine.

The US has been holding talks with Russia and separately with Ukrainian and European officials to broker a truce.

Witkoff, a property mogul and Donald Trump’s special envoy, has acted as a conduit between the White House and the Kremlin in recent months.

He is set to return to Moscow this week for another meeting with Putin. Rubio said on Wednesday he would focus on these talks in Moscow.

It comes after reports the US is considering proposing to recognise Crimea as Russian territory as a means to bring an end to fighting, which has been ruled out by Zelensky.

Crimea, internationally recognised as part of Ukraine, has been under Russian occupation since 2014.

US Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday repeated President Donald Trump’s recent assertion that the US would walk away from brokering further Russia-Ukraine talks if Moscow or Kyiv did not agree to a deal.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or injured on all sides since then.