POLAND SCRAMBLES JETS
The death toll included two employees of the state railway company Ukrzaliznytsia in the city of Nikopol, who were killed when a depot was hit, the Dnipropetrovsk region’s governor Sergiy Lysak and the operator said. Three more people were wounded in the bombing.
Odesa governor Oleg Kiper said strikes on the port city likewise killed two.
A Russian drone strike killed two people and injured six others, including two children, in the southern Mykolaiv region, according to Ukraine’s emergency services.
In the western Lviv region, relatively spared from the conflict, a cruise missile strike killed a 66-year-old woman and wounded two others, said military administration chief Makdym Kozytsky.
Several people were also injured in separate attacks in Dnipro in the east, the central Poltava as well as the southern Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and Kherson regions.
Russian missiles and drones even struck Transcarpathia, a very rarely targeted western region far from the front line on the border with Poland and Hungary, without causing any casualties.
That prompted neighbouring Poland to scramble fighter jets and mobilise all available forces on Sunday in response.
Warsaw puts its armed forces on alert whenever attacks against its neighbouring country are deemed likely to create a danger for its own territory.
“DIPLOMATIC MEANS”
Top diplomat Sybiga branded the barrage as Russia’s “real response” to Western leaders who had sought to reach out to President Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv was riled by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz initiating a call with Putin on Friday despite Ukraine’s objections, in what was the Russian leader’s first phone conversation with a major Western leader in nearly two years.
Ukraine accused Scholz of an “attempt at appeasement” and said the call would not achieve anything other than minimise Putin’s “isolation”.
Having repeatedly promised to end the Ukraine war in a day, Trump’s re-election has reignited debate over the prospect of a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
After long dismissing the prospect of talks, Zelenskyy on Saturday said he wanted to bring an end to the war by “diplomatic means” next year.
Yet Kyiv and the Kremlin remain at odds over the terms of any peace deal.
Putin has said he will only accept talks with Ukraine if Kyiv surrenders Ukrainian territory that Moscow occupies.
Zelenskyy has rejected Putin’s conditions.
