More than a dozen people killed in Ukraine after Russian drone strikes miners' bus

xv people were killed and vii maimed after a Russian drone on struck a heap carrying miners in Ukraine's southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, energy firm DTEK ​and government officials said on Sunday.

The attack came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that a ⁠second round of U.S.-brokered trilateral talks between Ukraine and ‍Russia would ⁠take place next week.

DTEK ​said in a statement that Russian forces had carried out a "massive terrorist attack" on a company mine in the region and that all of the dead and wounded ⁠were its employees returning from a shift.

"Today, the enemy carried out a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers in ‍the Dnipropetrovsk region," Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Police said the attack took place in ⁠the city of Ternivka.

Footage posted by the State Emergencies Service showed a ​charred bus with shattered windows that had veered off the ​road.

Meanwhile, in southeastern Ukraine, two people were killed overnight in a drone strike on a residential building in the city of Dnipro, and regional officials said at least nine ‍people had been wounded in Russian strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential building in the ‍city of ⁠Zaporizhzhia.

The strikes also follow remarks by Zelenskyy earlier in the day that Russia — which said it had agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure until Feb. 1 — was still targeting logistics in Ukraine.

U.S.-backed trilateral talks involving Ukraine and Russia will take place next week in Abu Dhabi, Zelenskyy said on Sunday, as Ukrainians faced uncertainty over the fate of an energy ceasefire with Russia amid plunging temperatures.

Kyiv is under U.S. Pressure to secure peace 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.

The first round of negotiations, which took place in late January, led to no new 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.

Zelenskyy said the new talks would take place on Wednesday and Thursday, and that Ukraine — struggling to stop grinding Russian advances on the battlefield — was ready for a "substantive discussion."

"Ukraine is ready for a substantive discussion, and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war," Zelenskyy wrote on social media platform X.

In the capital Kyiv, 1,000 apartment buildings remained without heating on Sunday, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, as a new wave of bitter cold swept across much of the country.

Temperatures in the city on Sunday hovered around –15 C, as workers raced to restore heating to hundreds of the nearly 3,500 highrises affected by a widespread grid malfunction on Saturday.

Temperatures in Kyiv are expected to drop even further on Monday to well below –20 C.

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.

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 said the suspension was supposed to last until the following Friday.

Ukraine and Russia have not reported major strikes on their energy systems in recent days, though Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia was attempting "to destroy logistics and connectivity between cities and communities" through ongoing air attacks.

Ukrainian private energy firm DTEK said on Sunday it had restored power to 300,000 households in the southern coastal region of Odesa, which had been hit hard by the malfunction.

Grid operator Ukrenergo said late on Saturday that planned outages would be in force throughout the entire country.

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."

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