Ukraine says Russian missile strike kills dozens in Sumy

Greg Sullivan and Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Bloomberg News on Apr 13, 2025

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Ukraine said more than two dozen people were killed and scores injured after Russian missiles struck the city of Sumy, days after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war.

Two ballistic missiles hit the center of the city, in northeastern Ukraine, on Palm Sunday morning, the city’s regional administration said on its Telegram channel.

At least 34 people were killed and 117 injured, including children, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media. The missile strikes came as many people were out on the streets and traveling in cars and on public transportation,

At least one of the missiles was equipped with cluster munitions in order to maximize casualties, Andriy Yermak, top aide to Zelenskyy, said on Telegram. The missiles involved in Russia’s deadliest strike of 2025 so far were fired from Russia’s Kursk and Voronezh regions, Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said on Telegram.

The projectiles were said to be Iskander-M/KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles supplied by North Korea, which Russia is believed to have been since late 2023.

“The world must respond firmly. The United States, Europe, everyone in the world who wants this war and these killings to end,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “Russia wants exactly this kind of terror and is dragging this war out.”

The missile attack in the city with a pre-war population of about 275,000 came on the day Christians celebrated the start of Holy Week, and just days after U.S. President Donald Trump escalated pressure on Russia in his bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump had said on Friday on his social media platform that “Russia has to get moving” and bemoaned the death toll from the war, now well into its fourth year. Witkoff, who’s become a key intermediary on Ukraine for Trump’s attempts to bring an end to the fighting, traveled to St. Petersburg the same day for his third meeting with Putin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the talks with the U.S. envoy were “an additional step” toward a meeting between Trump and Putin, which he said would happen in “due time,” though preparation was still needed.

Peskov said in an interview — excerpts of which were posted Sunday by state TV reporter Pavel Zarubin — that U.S.-Russian dialogue was progressing “really well,” but that it was difficult to restore relations from practically nothing.

Negotiations on a ceasefire — which Trump predicted he could achieve soon after his January inauguration — have stalled following talks in Saudi Arabia last month. Russia is demanding the reconnection of one of its largest state banks to the SWIFT international messaging system that’s under the European Union’s jurisdiction as a condition for accepting a U.S.-brokered truce in the Black Sea.

“It’s now the second month that Putin has been ignoring the U.S. proposal for a full and unconditional ceasefire,” Zelenskyy said on Telegram. “Unfortunately, there in Moscow they are convinced they can keep killing with impunity.”

Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of breaching a 30-day moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure that’s due to expire April 18.

Sunday’s strike by Russia on Sumy follows one earlier in the month on Kryvih Rih in central Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s home town, that killed at least 20 people, including nine children.

Separately, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Sunday it had downed a Ukrainian F-16 fighter jet. Zelenskyy on Saturday said that the plane’s 26-year-old pilot was killed in combat, but that authorities were looking into what had happened, in the second publicly known instance of Ukraine losing that type of aircraft along with its pilot since August.

Ukraine’s forces attacked Russia’s Belgorod region, just over the nations’ border, with 78 drones over the past day, the area’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on his Telegram channel.

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(With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska.)

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