Moscow rocket attack leaves 3 dead in Sumy, Kyiv damages bridge in Russia

KYIV: A Russian attack targeted the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Tuesday, killing at least three people and leaving many injured, officials said. Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the assault, saying it underscored that Moscow has no intentions of halting the three-year war.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's secret services said they struck again in Russia's rear, two days after a spectacular Ukrainian drone attack on air bases deep inside Russia.

In Sumy, local authorities said a barrage of rockets struck apartment buildings and a medical facility in the centre of the northeastern city, a day after direct peace talks made no progress on ending the 3-year war.


Delegations from the warring sides held talks in Istanbul on Monday and agreed to swap dead and wounded troops but their terms for ending the war remained far apart.

A vital bridge to Crimea
The Ukrainian Security Service, known by its acronym SBU, claimed it damaged the foundations of the Kerch Bridge linking Russia and illegally annexed Crimea - a key artery for Russian military supplies in the war.

The SBU said it detonated 1,100 kilograms (2,400 pounds) of explosives on the seabed overnight, damaging the bridge's foundations in an operation that took several months to set up. It was the third Ukrainian strike on the bridge since Russia's invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, the SBU said.

"The bridge is now effectively in an emergency condition," the SBU claimed.

It said no civilians were killed or injured in the operation. It was not possible to independently confirm the claims.

Traffic across the Kerch Bridge was halted for three hours early Tuesday morning but reopened at 9 a.m., official Russian social media channels said.

'city targeted'
The Ukrainian President said the attack on Sumy was a "completely deliberate strike on civilians and that one of the rockets pierced the wall of an apartment building but failed to detonate. "The Russians brutally struck Sumy-directly targeting the city, ordinary streets-with rocket artillery," Zelenskyy said.

"That's all you need to know about Russia's 'desire' to end this war," the Ukrainian president wrote in a post on Telegram.

Zelenskyy appealed for global pressure and "decisive action from the US, Europe, and everyone in the world who holds power"-without it Russian President Vladimir Putin "will not agree to a ceasefire."