Russian strikes kill 30 in Ukraine frontline city, talks set in US

Ukraine on Thursday accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians after 30 people were killed when two buses were blown up in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, in one of the deadliest attacks in weeks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed that the attack “will not go unanswered” after photos posted by local authorities showed the burnt-out metal shell of the vehicles, with bodies and debris strewn across the road.
“Russia is trying to destroy all life in (the) Donbas (region) and the world must respond to this,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram, warning the death toll could rise.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the current stalemate after nearly five years of fighting was “very dangerous” and could lead to escalation.
Zelensky confirmed that Ukrainian negotiators were headed to the United States for talks Friday and Saturday with a US team.
“We are also counting on a European team to join our negotiating group,” he added.
US sources told AFP that officials from Britain, France, Germany, NATO and the European Union were invited to the talks.
“They will discuss new ideas and proposals that American negotiators began developing with the Russians and Ukrainians during their recent visit to the region”, one of the US sources familiar with the talks told AFP.
“They are all nervous about the winter. It will be a tough winter if the war does not stop,” the US source said.

‘The issue is survival’ –
The Kramatorsk strikes came just a day after five young children were among 22 killed when a Russian missile struck a five-storey apartment block in Pryluky, in the northern Chernigiv region.
UN rights chief Volker Turk condemned the wave of Russian attacks on civilians.
“The scale and manner of these attacks — killing and injuring people on buses, at their homes and work in different areas of the country — is reprehensible”, Turk said.
Russia claims the eastern Donetsk region as its own and the area has been the epicentre of fighting but it has not yet captured Kramatorsk.
“The Russians are deliberately targeting civilians,” Donetsk governor Vadym Filashkin said, accusing Moscow of flouting “every conceivable rule of warfare and norm of international humanitarian law”.
The Kramatorsk City Council insisted there were “absolutely no military targets” in the area.
Three more people were killed in shelling at a nearby village, the emergency services said.