By Dan Peleschuk
KYIV, Feb 1 (Reuters) – A Russian drone strike on a bus carrying miners killed at least 12 people, Ukrainian officials said on Sunday, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced new peace talks amid uncertainty over a Russian suspension of attacks on energy infrastructure.
First Deputy Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the strike in the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region was a “cynical and targeted” attack on energy workers. Their employer DTEK said the victims were finishing a shift.
Kyiv is under U.S. pressure to agree a peace deal in the nearly four-year war while grappling with a Russian campaign of airstrikes that has ravaged its energy system during one of the coldest winters in years.
UKRAINE READY FOR ‘SUBSTANTIVE TALKS’
The first round of U.S.-backed trilateral talks between Ukraine and Russia took place in late January, but led to no movement on the vital question of territory, with Moscow still demanding Kyiv cede more land in its war-torn east, which it refuses to do.
Zelenskiy said the new round would take place on February 4 and 5, and that Ukraine – also struggling to stop grinding Russian advances on the battlefield – was ready for “substantive” talks.
The Kremlin said two days ago it had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure until Sunday at the request of U.S. President Donald Trump, and Kyiv said it would reciprocate.
Ukraine – which faced a new cold snap on Sunday with temperatures hovering around minus 15 C (5 degrees Fahrenheit) – said the suspension was supposed to last until the following Friday.
ATTACKS ON RAIL AND OTHER LOGISTICS INFRASTRUCTURE
The countries have not reported major strikes on their energy systems in recent days, though Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Russia was attacking railway infrastructure and other logistics.
He also said its forces had attacked the power grid in two cities across the Dnipro river from the front line, but did not explicitly accuse Russia of breaking the energy ceasefire.
In southeastern Ukraine, two people were killed overnight in a drone strike on a house in the city of Dnipro, and nine people were wounded in attacks on a maternity ward and a residential neighbourhood in Zaporizhzhia, regional officials said.
Zaporizhzhia resident Daria Makarenko, 29, whose neighbour’s house was damaged in one of the strikes, lashed out at Russia as she stood outside near the mangled structure.
“‘We’re not hitting energy, but we can destroy people’?” she said, mocking Moscow’s forces while tearing up. “How can that be? Why are (innocent) people to blame?”
RACE TO PREPARE FOR NEW COLD SNAP
In the capital Kyiv, nearly 700 apartment buildings remained without heating on Sunday afternoon, said Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba, as a new wave of bitter cold swept across much of the country.
Workers raced to restore heating after a widespread grid malfunction on Saturday knocked out power across parts of the country and heating to nearly 3,500 high-rises in Kyiv.
Officials did not directly link it to war damage, but the resulting blackouts – which spread to neighbouring Moldova – underlined the vulnerability of Ukraine’s energy system after months of Russian attacks.
Temperatures were expected to drop even further on Monday to well below minus 20 C in Kyiv. Grid operator Ukrenergo said late on Saturday that planned outages would be in force throughout the entire country.
Kyiv’s energy ministry said on Sunday it was importing a record daily level of 41.987 gigawatt hours in January to keep the system stable.
Anatoliy Veresenko, a 65-year-old veteran who was out for a run at a Kyiv park, said he was warily anticipating new attacks and did not place much hope in the peace process.
“Talks are talks. We hope for peace, but we still need to fight and secure victory,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Daria Smetanko in Kyiv and Serhiy Chalyi in Zaporizhzhia; Editing by Alexander Smith and David Holmes)
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