Dead bodies were strewn on the ground in the middle of a city street near a destroyed bus and burnt-out cars in a video posted by Zelenskyy on social media.

A man cries at the bus that was hit by a Russian missile in Sumy, Ukraine on Sunday, 13 April. Source: AP / Volodymyr Hordiienko

“Only scoundrels can act like this, taking the lives of ordinary people,” he said, noting that the attack had come on Palm Sunday when some people were going to church.

“These attacks show just what Russia’s supposed readiness for peace is worth,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on social media.

Trump urged to visit Ukraine

Under Trump’s administration, US officials have held separate rounds of talks with Kremlin and Kyiv officials to try to move toward a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.

Sumy, with a population of around a quarter of a million and located just over 25 km from the Russian border, became a garrison city when Kyiv’s forces launched an incursion into Russia in August that has since been largely repelled.

‘Deliberate destruction of civilians’

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and currently holds nearly 20 per cent of the neighbouring country’s territory in the east and south. Russian forces have been slowly advancing in the east.

‘So-called diplomacy’

“Russia is building all this so-called diplomacy … around strikes on civilians,” he wrote on Telegram.