Kramatorsk Toll Rises to Thirty-Five as Zelensky Turns on Washington
Volodymyr Zelensky says Thursday’s strike on two public buses killed at least thirty-five, up from the thirty reported when it happened, and puts the two-day national toll at seventy-eight killed and 215 wounded. He accused the United States of being unwilling to help while pursuing economic ties with Moscow. Ukrainian negotiators fly to Florida today.
His specific demand is Starlink: “Open Starlink for Ukraine. You did open it when you were responding to Iran… I’ve said quite openly — give it to us, help us defend our skies and dominate there. And then Putin will sit down at the negotiating table.” He wants expanded access in order to target Russian ballistic-missile launchers. One correction worth making plainly: this edition and others described the weapon on Thursday as a glide bomb, and the approved record does not support that — four sources give three different descriptions, so it is reported here simply as a Russian strike. Volker Türk, the United Nations human rights commissioner, said he was “appalled by the wave of attacks killing civilians across Ukraine over the past four days… 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.” Talks begin in Florida today and tomorrow with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, covering security guarantees and a post-war plan. Britain moved yesterday: Ed Miliband, on his first visit to Ukraine as Foreign Secretary, announced about forty new sanctions designations across Russian finance, oil and technology, £54m in energy and humanitarian funding and £6.3m for war-crimes accountability, telling Moscow “You cannot wait us out.”