Two Russian ballistic missiles slammed into the heart of the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy, killing 34 people and wounding 117 in the deadliest strike on Ukraine this year, officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded a tough international response against Russia over the attack, which came with US President Donald Trump's push to rapidly end the war struggling to make a breakthrough.
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 Mr Zelensky on social media.
"Only scoundrels can act like this. Taking the lives of ordinary people," he wrote on social media.
"And this is on a day when people go to church: Palm Sunday, the feast of the Lord's Entry into Jerusalem," Mr Zelensky said.
Interior minister Ihor Klymenko said the victims were on the street, in vehicles, public transport and in buildings when the strike hit.
"Deliberate destruction of civilians on an important church feast day," he wrote.
Sumy, which lies some 50km from the Russian border, has come under intense attack from Moscow's forces in recent weeks.
It has been under increasing pressure since Moscow pushed back much of Ukraine's troops from its Kursk region across the border.
"Many dead today as a result of a missile strike," the acting mayor of Sumy, Artem Kobzar, said on social media, adding that "the enemy has struck civilians again".
He confirmed three days of mourning for the victims would be held starting from today.
It followed a missile strike in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih, Mr Zelensky's hometown and far from the ground war's front lines in the east and south, earlier this month that killed 20 people, including nine children.
The leaders of Britain, Germany and Italy condemned the attack.
"These attacks show just what Russia's supposed readiness for peace is worth," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote on social media.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin also condemned the attack, saying that Russia is continuing its relentless and destructive war despite calls for a ceasefire.
I condemn the shocking and horrific missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy that killed dozens of civilians and injured hundreds more.
— Micheál Martin (@MichealMartinTD) April 13, 2025
Despite calls for a ceasefire, Russian continues its relentless and destructive war. The killing has to stop.
Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris said that he was appalled by the attack on Sumy, calling it "utterly despicable".
In a post on social media, he also said he condemns "this latest cowardly attack by Russia".
"These are not the actions of a country seeking peace," he said.
Talks on Russia-Ukraine peace deal 'going fine' - Trump
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Ukraine was "sharing detailed information about this war crime with all of our partners and international institutions".
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which Ukraine officially joined this year, is conducting investigations into high-profile cases of alleged war crimes in the conflict.
Andriy Kovalenko, a security official who runs Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation, noted that the strike came after a visit to Russia by US envoy Steve Witkoff for talks with top officials including President Vladimir Putin.
"Russia is building all this so-called diplomacy ... around strikes on civilians," he wrote on Telegram.
Under Trump's administration, US officials have held separate rounds of talks with Russian and Ukrainian officials to try to move towards a cessation of hostilities in Ukraine.
Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause strikes on each other's energy facilities last month, but both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
The latest strikes come after US President Donald Trump said that talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine may be going okay, but "there's a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up".
Mr Trump made the comment to reporters a day after he showed frustration with Russia and told it to "get moving" on reaching a deal.
"I think Ukraine-Russia might be going okay, and you’re going to be finding out pretty soon," Mr Trump told reporters on Air Force One.
"There’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up and we'll see what happens, but I think it’s going fine."
The Kremlin has said that contacts with Mr Trump's team were moving ahead very well but that it was too early to expect instant results due to the level of damage done to relations under former president Joe Biden.
"Everything is going very well," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television when asked about the differing views of the state of relations between Moscow and Washington.
Contacts were under way at several levels, Mr Peskov said, including via the foreign ministry, intelligence agencies and Mr Putin's investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
"But, of course, it is impossible to expect any instant results," Mr Peskov said, citing what he called the damage done to bilateral relations under Mr Biden.
On Friday, Mr Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the search for a peace deal.
The talks came at a time when US-Russia dialogue aimed at agreeing a ceasefire ahead of a possible peace deal to end the war appeared to have stalled over disagreements around conditions for a full pause in hostilities.
Mr Trump has shown signs of losing patience and has spoken of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a deal.
Asked if a Putin-Trump meeting was getting nearer, Mr Peskov said the two powers were "walking along this path together very patiently" but that trying to restore relations took serious and painstaking work.
His words suggested that such a meeting "requires more work, requires more time".
European leaders and Ukraine describe the 2022 invasion as an imperial-style land grab by Mr Putin, and European leaders have repeatedly demanded that Russia be defeated on the battlefield
Mr Putin has long cast Ukraine's tilt to the West, including its desire to join NATO, as a threat to Russia.
