Photo: Sumy regional military administration / Telegram

Nine people were killed and seven were injured when a Russian drone hit a civilian minibus in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, local authorities said on Saturday.

According to Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov, Russian forces struck the bus with a Lancet drone near the border city of Bilopillya shortly after 6am local time. He called the strike a “deliberate attack on civilian transport that poses no threat” that constituted “another war crime by Russia”.

Bilopillya Mayor Yury Zarko told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne that the bus was evacuating civilians from Bilopillya to the regional capital Sumy when it was hit by the drone, with most of the victims elderly women.

“This day will go down in the history of our city as ‘Black Saturday’. Not even the [Nazi] fascists did such things”, Zarko wrote on Facebook.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday would be days of mourning in Bilopillya, Zarko added, with regional authorities also announcing two days of mourning across Sumy.

The deadly attack came just hours after the first direct negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv in three years, during which the two sides agreed to the largest prisoner exchange of the war to date but failed to reach a breakthrough on a ceasefire.

The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, said Moscow was “satisfied with the result” of Friday’s talks at Istanbul’s Dolmabahçe Palace and “ready to continue contacts”, with the two sides agreeing to present their own “vision of a ceasefire” before continuing negotiations.

In a brief press statement given in English, Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, called the planned prisoner exchange “an important achievement”, adding that the next step for Kyiv would be to organise a meeting between Putin and Zelensky.

A Ukrainian diplomatic source struck a less positive tone in a comment to Reuters, however, saying that Russia’s demands in Istanbul were “detached from reality” and went “far beyond” anything previously discussed — including “non-starters” such as ultimatums for Ukraine to withdraw from parts of its own territory in order to obtain a ceasefire.

Citing a “well-placed” source from Ukraine’s diplomatic service, The Economist’s Oliver Carroll said Medinsky told the Ukrainian delegation that Russia was prepared to fight the war “forever”, and threatened that Russian forces would seize both Sumy and the neighbouring Kharkiv region should Kyiv not agree to Moscow’s demands.