Ukraine says Russian strikes dash peace progress hopes after 18 killed

Ukraine on Monday said multiple Russian strikes on a school where humanitarian aid was distributed killed at least 18 people and dashed fragile hopes of "progress toward peace" after a local ceasefire in the south expired without violations.

Ukraine says Russian strikes dash peace progress hopes after 18 killedRussia resumed its strikes on the southern region of Kherson after the end of a local ceasefire in the area, the longest truce in the war raging between the neighbours since Russia's 2022 invasion, Kyiv said.

A rare pause in fighting, brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump to enable a mission to the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, ended Sunday after starting on Tuesday, with neither side reporting violations. But hours after the truce, Russia targeted a village in a region adjacent to Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, with repeated strikes that killed at least 18 people, some of whom had come to collect aid at a local school.

Footage posted by Ukrainian emergency services showed the building reduced to piles of smouldering rubble and rescuers working at the site. "People were receiving humanitarian aid there. After the first aerial bomb strike, there was a double-tap strike with nine more bombs, specifically targeting the shelter where people were taking cover," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.

Among those killed were "a police officer and two State Emergency Service rescuers", regional governor Mykhailo Semikin said on Telegram. Zelensky said that after the Oleshky truce, "there was a moment when the next steps could have shown that progress toward peace was possible." "With these killings, Russia is sending an entirely opposite signal: Russia is counting on more killings.

There must be a response to this a response from the world." The ceasefire last week enabled an evacuation of the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. It was the longest pause in fighting between the neighbours in the war, now in its fifth year, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions.

A senior Ukrainian figure told AFP Sunday that Russia refused a Ukrainian offer to extend the truce. Kyiv's military also alleged that Moscow had used the pause in fighting to "fortify its positions". The Kremlin did not deny the accusations, with its spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters Monday: "This is a completely normal practice in such situations." He alleged the Ukrainian army had also used pauses in fighting in the past to regroup.

Moscow saw the Oleshky humanitarian mission as "successful", Peskov added, praising the "good cooperation between all sides" and singling out the role of its human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova. Lantratova oversaw the ceasefire alongside her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Lubinets, with the pair visiting the city to deliver aid and arrange the evacuation of civilians one of the most substantial instances of Russian-Ukrainian cooperation since the start of the war.

The mission saw people taken both to Ukraine-controlled territory and to Moscow-annexed Crimea.