Russia strikes kill 4 in Ukraine; Rubio blasts Zelenskyy
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- Russian forces struck Odesa and Kryvyi Rih early Saturday, killing at least four people and wounding more than a dozen, damaging a maternity hospital, high-rise buildings, and an industrial site.
- Serhiy Lysak, head of Odesa's military administration, said one person died in hospital, 11 were wounded including a child, and fires broke out on the upper floors of an apartment block.
- Kryvyi Rih took a morning strike on an industrial site that killed two men and wounded two others, said Oleksandr Ganzha, head of the Dnipro regional administration.
- Naftogaz reported that Russian drones struck three of its gas production facilities in the Poltava region overnight, marking the third consecutive day of attacks and killing one worker.
- Marco Rubio accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of lying about US demands that Ukraine cede the Donbas region, saying "security guarantees are not going to kick in until there's an end to a war" and that the two were not linked.
- Rubio said the US is open to diverting weapons originally bound for Kyiv to support the US attack on Iran, adding "Nothing yet has been diverted but it could. If we need something for America and it's American, we're going to keep it for America first."
Why it matters: There are no active Russia-Ukraine peace talks even as Russian strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure continue unabated, with Naftogaz hit for a third straight day. Rubio's simultaneous attacks on Zelenskyy's credibility and openness to diverting Ukraine-bound weapons to the Iran campaign shows the Trump administration reshaping its global commitments in real time, leaving Kyiv exposed on both the battlefield and the diplomatic front.
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