A Russ­ian rock­et at­tack tar­get­ed the north­east­ern Ukrain­ian city of Sumy on Tues­day, killing at least three peo­ple and wound­ing 25, of­fi­cials said.

Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy de­nounced the as­sault, say­ing it un­der­scored that Moscow has no in­ten­tions of halt­ing the 3-year-old war.

The at­tack came a day af­ter di­rect peace talks in Is­tan­bul made no progress on end­ing the fight­ing. Lo­cal au­thor­i­ties said the bar­rage of rock­ets struck apart­ment build­ings and a med­ical fa­cil­i­ty in the cen­tre of Sumy.

Mean­while, Ukraine’s se­cret ser­vices said they struck in­side Rus­sia again, two days af­ter a spec­tac­u­lar Ukrain­ian drone at­tack on air bases deep in­side the coun­try.

A vi­tal bridge to Crimea

The Ukrain­ian Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice, known by its acronym SBU, claimed it dam­aged the foun­da­tions of the Kerch Bridge link­ing Rus­sia and il­le­gal­ly an­nexed Crimea — a key artery for Russ­ian mil­i­tary sup­plies in the war.

The SBU said it det­o­nat­ed 1,100 kilo­grams (2,400 pounds) of ex­plo­sives on the seabed overnight, in an op­er­a­tion that took sev­er­al months to set up. It was the third Ukrain­ian strike on the bridge since Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of its neigh­bour in Feb­ru­ary 2022, the SBU said.

“The bridge is now ef­fec­tive­ly in an emer­gency con­di­tion,” the SBU claimed.

The agency said no civil­ians were killed or in­jured in the op­er­a­tion. It was not pos­si­ble to in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firm those claims.

Traf­fic across the Kerch Bridge was halt­ed for three hours ear­ly Tues­day, but it re­opened at 9 a.m., of­fi­cial Russ­ian so­cial me­dia chan­nels said. It closed for a sec­ond time at 3:20 p.m. and re­opened again af­ter two and a half hours.

Ze­len­skyy ap­peals for pres­sure on Moscow

The Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent called the at­tack on Sumy a “com­plete­ly de­lib­er­ate” strike on civil­ians.

“That’s all you need to know about Rus­sia’s ‘de­sire’ to end this war,” the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent wrote on so­cial me­dia.

Ze­len­skyy ap­pealed for glob­al pres­sure and “de­ci­sive ac­tion from the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope and every­one in the world who holds pow­er.” With­out it, he said, Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin “will not agree even to a cease­fire.”

The war has killed more than 12,000 Ukrain­ian civil­ians, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, as well as tens of thou­sands of sol­diers on both sides along the rough­ly 1,000-kilo­me­tre (620-mile) front line where the fight­ing grinds on de­spite U.S.-led ef­forts to bro­ker a peace deal.

A stun­ning Ukrain­ian drone at­tack

Though Rus­sia has a big­ger army and more eco­nom­ic re­sources than Ukraine, the Ukrain­ian drone at­tack over the week­end dam­aged or de­stroyed more than 40 war­planes at air bases deep in­side Rus­sia, Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials said, tout­ing it as a se­ri­ous blow to the Krem­lin’s strate­gic ar­se­nal and mil­i­tary pres­tige.

The Russ­ian De­fence Min­istry ac­knowl­edged that the Ukrain­ian at­tack set sev­er­al planes ablaze at two air bases but said the mil­i­tary re­pelled at­tempt­ed at­tacks on three oth­er air bases.

Both Ze­len­skyy and Putin have been ea­ger to show U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump that they share his am­bi­tion to end the fight­ing — and avoid pos­si­ble puni­tive mea­sures from Wash­ing­ton. Ukraine has ac­cept­ed a U.S.-pro­posed cease­fire, but the Krem­lin ef­fec­tive­ly re­ject­ed it. Putin has made it clear that any peace set­tle­ment has to be on his terms.

Del­e­ga­tions from the war­ring sides agreed Mon­day to swap dead and wound­ed troops, but their con­di­tions for end­ing the war re­mained far apart.

Dmit­ry Medvedev, a for­mer Russ­ian pres­i­dent who now serves as deputy head of the coun­try’s Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil chaired by Putin, in­di­cat­ed on Tues­day that there would be no let-up in Rus­sia’s in­va­sion.

“The Is­tan­bul talks are not for strik­ing a com­pro­mise peace on some­one else’s delu­sion­al terms but for en­sur­ing our swift vic­to­ry and the com­plete de­struc­tion” of Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment, he said.

In an ap­par­ent com­ment on the lat­est Ukrain­ian strikes, he de­clared that “ret­ri­bu­tion is in­evitable.”

A Putin-Ze­len­skyy-Trump meet­ing ‘un­like­ly’ soon, Moscow says

Krem­lin spokesman Dmit­ry Peskov re­spond­ed to sug­ges­tions that a face-to-face meet­ing be­tween Putin, Trump and Ze­len­skyy could break the dead­lock, say­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty was “un­like­ly in the near fu­ture.”

Mean­while, a se­nior Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion led by First Deputy Prime Min­is­ter and Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Yuli­ia Svyry­denko has trav­elled to Wash­ing­ton for talks about de­fence, sanc­tions and post­war re­cov­ery, said An­drii Yer­mak, the head of Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial of­fice.

The del­e­ga­tion will meet with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both ma­jor U.S. po­lit­i­cal par­ties, as well as with ad­vis­ers to Trump, Yer­mak added.

Ukraini­ans in Kyiv wel­comed the strikes on Russ­ian air bases but were gloomy about prospects for a peace agree­ment.

“Rus­sia has in­vest­ed too many re­sources in this war to just … stop for noth­ing,” said ser­vice­man Oleh Nikolenko, 43.

His wife, Anas­ta­sia Nikolenko, a 38-year-old de­sign­er, said diplo­ma­cy can­not stop the fight­ing. “We need to show by force, by phys­i­cal force, that we can­not be de­feat­ed,” she said.

Rus­sia re­cent­ly ex­pand­ed its at­tacks on Sumy and the Kharkiv re­gion fol­low­ing Putin’s promise to cre­ate a buffer zone along the bor­der that might pre­vent long-range Ukrain­ian at­tacks from hit­ting Russ­ian soil. Sumy, about 25 kilo­me­tres (15 miles) from the bor­der, had a pre­war pop­u­la­tion of around 250,000.

The Russ­ian De­fence Min­istry claimed its troops had tak­en the Ukrain­ian vil­lage of An­dri­iv­ka, close to the bor­der in the Sumy re­gion. Ukraine made no im­me­di­ate com­ment on the claim, which could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.

Rus­sia al­so fired rock­et ar­tillery at Chys­tovo­di­v­ka vil­lage in the Kharkiv re­gion, killing two peo­ple and in­jur­ing three oth­ers, re­gion­al Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) —