Russia pounds Ukraine, kills more civilians before White House meeting

Al Jazeera

7 hours ago

Russian attacks on major Ukrainian cities have killed at least 12 people as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits Washington, DC, supported by European leaders, for high-stakes peace talks with United States President Donald Trump that could determine Ukraine's future and its fate in the war, now in its fourth year.
An entire family, including a toddler and a 16-year-old, were among seven people killed in an overnight drone strike on a residential neighbourhood in the northeastern city of Kharkiv, authorities said on Monday. The attack also injured 20 people, including six children.
Russian forces killed five people and injured four in attacks in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region, where some of the fiercest fighting on the ground rages on and where Russian President Vladimir Putin, feeling Moscow has the upper hand, seeks Ukraine's withdrawal from the third of the region Kyiv still controls.
In Zaporizhzhia, a city in the southeast, 17 people were injured in an attack, according to Governor Ivan Fedorov. Russian air raids also targeted the northeastern region of Sumy and the southern region of Odesa.
Ukraine's air force said Russian forces launched 140 drones and four missiles at Ukraine overnight, adding that 88 drones had been downed.
Russia has been intensifying its fight in Ukraine. According to the United Nations monitoring mission on Ukraine, about 2,600 drone attacks were recorded in the past month, the highest rate since the beginning of the war, and more than 300 civilians were killed.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's military said on Monday that its drones had struck an oil-pumping station in the Tambov region, a strike 1,923km (1,195 miles) from Ukraine, leading to the suspension of supplies via the Druzhba pipeline.
'As a result of the strike, a fire broke out at the facility. Oil pumping through the Druzhba main oil pipeline was completely stopped,' the Ukrainian military's General Staff said in a statement.
In Russia's border region of Belgorod, four people were injured in a Ukrainian drone attack while Russian officials reported shooting down hundreds of drones and munitions.
Negotiating an end to the war
Zelenskyy called the latest attacks on Ukraine 'demonstrative and cynical'. 'Putin will commit demonstrative killings to maintain pressure on Ukraine and Europe, as well as to humiliate diplomatic efforts,' he wrote on X.
Al Jazeera's Charles Stratford, reporting from Kyiv, said Zelenskyy saw the killing of civilians as a strategy aimed at giving Trump more bargaining chips with which to pressure Ukraine into accepting an unfavourable peace deal.
'This shows how much pressure Zelenskyy is under as he goes into … potentially the most vital diplomatic effort to end this war,' Stratford said.
Zelenskyy on Monday was expected to meet Trump for talks at the White House alongside a cadre of heavyweight European leaders, including European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen. On the table for discussion are possible land concessions as well as NATO-like security guarantees that Ukraine requires for any peace deal with Russia.
To date, Zelenskyy has refused to consider the possibility of ceding Ukrainian territory to bring about peace. It is also forbidden under the Ukrainian Constitution,
The meeting comes on the heels of a summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday that ended with no clear breakthrough on the war in Ukraine.
Military analyst Sean Bell said he had little hope that a peace deal would come out of the talks in Washington, DC, either. 'The harsh reality is that unless Putin has achieved his objectives, he's got no appetite for negotiations,' Bell told Al Jazeera.
'If President Zelenskyy is doing all the giving, that's in effect a surrender. Zelenskyy can't do that,' he continued. At the same time, Bell said he did not expect Russia to accept a deal that entails NATO-like security guarantees for Ukraine.
Bell said a 'catalyst' was needed to bring the war to a close, the most effective of which he believed to be Trump's stiff tariffs on buyers of Russian oil and gas, like India. The US president threatened to enact these secondary sanctions but has so far refrained from putting new pressure on Russia's fossil fuel export revenues.
'The fact that Trump has avoided doing that means the killing is going to continue,' Bell said.
Strength and safety in numbers appear to be factors in the group visit by European leaders with memories still fresh about the hostile reception Zelenskyy received in February from Trump and US Vice President JD Vance in a public White House dressing-down. They castigated the Ukrainian leader as being ungrateful and 'disrespectful'.