By Sergiy Chalyi and Max Hunder
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine, Oct 10 (Reuters) – Twenty people, including three children, were killed in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday, a day after US President Donald Trump announced a deal to lift sanctions on Russian diesel in a major setback for Kyiv.
“Today, Russia said thank you for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in some of his sharpest criticism yet of the White House.
Zaporizhzhia has been a regular target of Russian bombardment with strikes intensifying in the past few months.
A 6-year-old girl was among those killed when one strike reduced part of an apartment block to rubble. Her grandfather, Anatoliy Chumniy, stood sobbing over her body, laid on the ground in a white bag, after rescuers pulled it from the wreckage.
“Her birthday would have been at the end of the month,” he said through tears.
Eighteen others were wounded in the attack on the industrial city, with a pre-war population of over 700,000 and whose outskirts lie less than 30 km (20 miles) from the front line.
RUSSIA ESCALATING ATTACKS ON UKRAINIAN CITIES
It was the third mass-casualty attack on Ukraine this week.
Nearly 80 civilians were killed in Russian strikes on Wednesday and Thursday, including at least 30 killed by a bomb in the eastern garrison city of Kramatorsk and 22 others by a missile in the town of Pryluky, 80 miles east of Kyiv.
A senior official in Zaporizhzhia, Mykhailo Semikin, said Russia had hit several locations simultaneously in the early hours of Saturday.
Rescuers clambered through crumbled masonry to pull other residents of the building out alive. One man, whose leg was trapped in the rubble, screamed in pain as he was being freed.
“If (the Russians) have money, they’ll be able to carry on fighting us,” said Nataliia Malysheva, a 49-year-old local resident whose parents died in hospital after being pulled from the rubble.
“How many lives have been lost here, how many homes have been destroyed? How many innocent people have died in the meantime?”
MOSCOW NEEDS ‘DIFFERENT SIGNALS’
“Last night provided yet more confirmation that Russia perceives any easing of pressure as a signal that it can supposedly keep fighting, that it can supposedly keep dropping bombs on cities. Different signals are needed,” Zelenskiy said.
A missile attack on Saturday afternoon also hit a restaurant, wounding seven people in Kyiv.
Russian drones flew over Kyiv throughout the day, part of a vast new wave of bombardment of the capital, the heaviest since the early days of the war.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Saturday its drones had struck a data-processing centre in Kyiv and a cargo ship carrying military supplies to the Ukrainian port of Odesa.
TRUMP LIFTS DIESEL SANCTIONS
Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports comes as his administration seeks to curb fuel prices, which have risen sharply during the US conflict with Iran.
Kyiv had instead urged Washington to increase pressure on Moscow in an effort to force it into serious negotiations to end the four-and-a-half-year war.
Trump, meanwhile, has criticised Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, which he claims have driven up global prices. Kyiv has said it wants a total halt on all energy strikes by both sides as Moscow pummels Ukraine’s power grid.
On Saturday, parts of Kyiv and the surrounding region were left without power, bringing the city’s metro trains to a complete halt for the second time this week.
The latest strikes came after Ukrainian and European officials held talks with US negotiators in Miami on Friday aimed at developing a common proposal for ending the war, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Trump announced the diesel deal while the negotiations were underway, a move Zelenskiy said had caught Kyiv by surprise.
The Ukrainian delegation was headed home on Saturday, presidential aide Dmytro Lytvyn was cited by the Interfax Ukraine news agency as saying.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said after a call with Trump that an immediate resumption of peace talks was unlikely, citing Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow.
US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner may visit Moscow within the next two weeks, Russian state news agency TASS reported on Saturday, citing a source.
Four civilians were killed and five others were wounded as a result of Ukrainian attacks on the Russian-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the Russian-installed governor said on Saturday.
Reuters could not independently verify the report and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
(Reporting by Sergiy Chalyi in Zaporizhzhia and Max Hunder in Lviv, additional reporting by Dan PeleschukEditing by Ros Russell, Gareth Jones, Alexandra Hudson)
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