Russian attack on Ukrainian city kills 20, a day after Trump eases diesel sanctions on Moscow — SkimNews
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- Russia killed 20 civilians including three children in a glide bomb strike on apartment buildings in Zaporizhzhia on Saturday, wounding 18 others; a 6-year-old girl was among the dead, with her grandfather weeping beside her body in a white bag.
- Zelenskyy directly tied the attack to Trump's sanctions reversal, saying "Russia said thank you for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia" — among his sharpest criticism of the White House to date.
- The Zaporizhzhia hit was the third mass-casualty Russian attack on Ukraine this week, following roughly 80 civilian deaths Wednesday–Thursday — at least 30 killed by a bomb in Kramatorsk and 22 by a missile in Pryluky, 80 miles east of Kyiv.
- Trump announced the deal to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports on Friday while US–Ukrainian peace talks were underway in Miami; the Ukrainian delegation learned of the move through media, presidential aide Dmytro Lytvyn said, and the delegation headed home Saturday.
- Russian forces ran the heaviest drone bombardment of Kyiv since the war's early days on Saturday, striking a data-processing centre, a cargo ship carrying military supplies to Odesa, and a restaurant that wounded seven people, while parts of Kyiv lost power and its metro halted for the second time this week.
- Putin told Trump after a call that an immediate resumption of peace talks was unlikely, citing Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow; Russian state agency TASS reported US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner may visit Moscow within two weeks.
Why it matters: A mass-casualty strike landing within 24 hours of a US sanctions easing gives Zelenskyy documented evidence that relieving pressure on Moscow's energy revenues coincides with — and may enable — escalation rather than negotiation. Trump's diesel reversal was framed domestically as a fuel-price fix tied to the US–Iran conflict, but it landed in the middle of active Miami talks and contradicted Kyiv's explicit ask for more pressure on Moscow.
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