Russian air strikes on Ukraine killed at least 24 civilians and injured dozens on Tuesday, hours after US president Donald Trump gave the Kremlin less than a fortnight to make peace with Kyiv or face punishing tariffs on trade.
Sixteen people were killed and more than 40 wounded when a guided bomb hit a prison in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, and at least three people were killed – including a pregnant woman - by a missile strike on a hospital in the town of Kamyanske in the neighbouring province of Dnipropetrovsk. Meanwhile, five people were killed at an aid distribution point in Novoplatonivka village in the eastern Kharkiv region.
“Yesterday, very important words were spoken by president Trump about how the Russian leadership is wasting the world’s time by talking about peace while simultaneously killing people,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We all want genuine peace – dignified and lasting … Everyone except Russia,” he added, claiming that a ceasefire “could have long been in place, if not for Russia’s refusal”.
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“They must be compelled to stop the killing and make peace … We are grateful to all the leaders who are helping defend Ukraine and exerting pressure on Russia. Peace is possible. But only when Russia ends the war it itself started.”
Mr Trump said on Monday that he was “very disappointed” with Russian president Vladimir Putin and would give him “10 or 12 days” to seek a peace deal with Ukraine, bringing forward a previous 50-day deadline that would have expired in early September.
“We thought we had it settled numerous times,” Mr Trump said of Russia’s 3½-year full invasion of Ukraine. “And then president Putin goes out and starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever.”
The attack came three years to the night after an explosion in a jail in the town of Olenivka in occupied eastern Ukraine killed more than 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war and wounded more than 100.
Kyiv and a United Nations report suggested the jail was shelled from a Russian-held area, and Moscow blocked an international investigation of the incident.
“This is a gross violation of international humanitarian law and another proof of the war crimes of the Russian Federation,” Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said of the attack that took place late on Monday night.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted on Tuesday that “the Russian army does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military and paramilitary infrastructure.”
He gave only a brief response to Mr Trump’s comments, saying: “We have taken note of president Trump’s statements yesterday. The ‘special military operation’ continues, and we remain committed to a peaceful resolution of the conflict around Ukraine - one that secures our interests as part of that process.”
Moscow calls its all-out invasion of pro-western Ukraine a “special military operation”, and says it will end only when Kyiv agrees to the permanent occupation of five regions, abandons its Nato membership hopes and accepts other limitations on its sovereignty.
“Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10 … He should remember 2 things,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media.
“1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran. 2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country.”
Mr Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, also lashed out at Republican senator Lindsey Graham: “It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get [to] the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!”
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