KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian glide bomb struck a village in eastern Ukraine as people lined up outside to receive their pensions on Tuesday, killing at least 21 and wounding nearly two dozen others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a regional official said.
The bomb hit the Donetsk region village of Yarova, Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram. The village lies less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the front line.
It was the latest Russian attack to kill civilians. More than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed in the three-year war, the United Nations says.
With U.S.-led peace efforts making no headway in recent months, Russia has escalated its aerial barrages of Ukraine. On Sunday, Russia hit the capital, Kyiv, with drones and missiles in the largest aerial attack since the war began on Feb. 24, 2022.
“Frankly brutal,” Zelenskyy said of Tuesday’s attack, urging the international community to make Russia pay economically for its full-scale invasion through additional sanctions.
“The world should not remain silent,” Zelenskyy wrote. “The world should not remain inactive. The United States needs a reaction. Europe needs a reaction. The G20 needs a reaction. Strong action is needed so that Russia stops bringing death.”
Russia has been scaling up its aerial attacks, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to persuade Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire and enter peace talks with Zelenskyy.
The major barrages have prompted concerns that Ukraine is using up its air defenses quicker than they can be replaced by its Western allies.
U.S. and European officials met at the U.S. Treasury Department on Monday evening to discuss various forms of economic pressure to exert on Russia, including new sanctions and tariffs on Russian oil purchases, a person familiar with the meeting told The Associated Press.
The talks were expected to continue Tuesday.
The glide bombs are retrofitted Soviet weapons that have laid waste to eastern Ukraine for months. Some of them now weigh 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), which is six times bigger than when they were first used in battle in 2022.
In Ukrainian villages, where there are no ATMs and older people are unfamiliar with digital banking, pensions are commonly delivered to the local post office on a certain day of every month. Retirees stand in line to pick up their pension in cash.
Photos and video of the scene posted on official Ukrainian channels showed bodies lying around a damaged white car with yellow branding that was parked beneath trees, suggesting that it was acting as a mobile post office in the dangerous area. Officials weren’t immediately available to comment.
The head of Ukraine’s national postal service, Ukrposhta, said the company constantly changes security procedures. Ihor Smilianskyi said the car was parked under trees to reduce the risk of it being spotted by the enemy.
“But apparently, someone gave away the coordinates,” Smilianskyi wrote on Facebook.
Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin said that 21 people were killed and 21 others wounded in the attack.
“This is not warfare. This is pure terrorism,” he wrote on Telegram.
Emergency responders were at the scene, he said.
The territory was occupied by Russia in 2022, but was liberated by Ukraine’s armed forces in a counteroffensive later the same year.
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Fatima Hussein contributed to this report from Washington.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine