By Yuliia Dysa and Max Hunder
KYIV, Oct 8 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused the US of being unwilling to help Ukraine after a Russian bomb attack on Thursday killed at least 30 people in the east, sending the two-day death toll from Russian strikes to over 70.
Hours after the strike on the embattled city of Kramatorsk tore through two buses, Zelenskiy criticised Washington’s effort to pursue economic ties with Russia while also seeking to mediate the more than four-year war.
The morning attack came a day after a mass Russian drone and missile attack killed dozens across Ukraine - 22 of them in a residential building in the central town of Pryluky, around 80 miles east of Kyiv.
Seventy-eight people were killed and 215 others wounded by strikes in the last two days across Ukraine, Zelenskiy said.
Speaking to reporters in Pryluky, the Ukrainian leader urged the US to accede to his requests to expand Ukraine’s access to the Starlink satellite service to help it target Russian ballistic-missile launchers.
‘THAT’S CALLED UNWILLINGNESS’
“Open Starlink for Ukraine. You did open it when you were responding to Iran … I’ve said quite openly – give it to us, help us defend our skies and dominate there. And then Putin will sit down at the negotiating table,” he said in an emotional statement.
Ukraine has in recent months aimed to wrest the battlefield initiative from Russia, whose gains have slowed this year, but is still suffering from Moscow’s increasingly brutal air war.
“So where’s the truth here, where’s the honesty? Where’s the stalemate? … That’s called unwillingness,” he said, referring to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s assertion earlier on Thursday the war is at a stalemate and that the United States would keep working toward a settlement.
“One cannot, on the one hand, negotiate with the Russians about future economic projects, whilst on the other hand say that we find ourselves in some sort of … diplomatic stalemate,” Zelenskiy added.
Top Russian and US officials, including US Special Envoy Jared Kushner, have held talks about bringing a US investor into the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany before Moscow invaded Ukraine, Reuters reported on Thursday.Ukrainian negotiators will travel to the US on Friday and Saturday for talks, Zelenskiy added, urging US President Donald Trump to increase sanction pressure on Russia.
INTENSIFYING STRIKES
Eighteen people were also wounded in the Kramatorsk strike - one of the biggest single attacks of the year by Russia. Moscow has denied targeting civilians but regularly pounds cities with missiles and drones.
“The Russians are deliberately targeting civilians. For them, a bus with of passengers is an attractive target precisely because a single strike can kill as many people as possible,” regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram app.
Images posted by officials showed bodies strewn across a street littered with debris and a charred shell of a bus. Some bodies had not been identified yet, Zelenskiy said, adding that the attack would not go unanswered.
Separately on Thursday, three people were killed and 14 wounded in morning attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, according to mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Russia has unleashed relentless drone strikes against Kyiv in recent weeks, targeting warehouses, data centres and renewing its campaign against Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter.
“Putin and his regime have no intention of stopping the killing,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X.
“On the contrary, they are escalating it, turning ordinary civilian life into a target for Russian bombs.”
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa, Max Hunder and Dan Peleschuk; Editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew Heavens)
