Russian drone strike kills 12 miners in Dnipropetrovsk region

A Russian drone strike killed 12 miners who had just finished their shift at a coal mine in east-central Ukraine on Sunday afternoon, officials said. The strike hit a bus carrying workers from a mine run by the energy company DTEK in the Dnipropetrovsk region, the company said. DTEK initially said 15 workers had been killed and seven injured, but a spokesman later said the toll was 12 dead and 16 injured.

The company said the strike was part of a large Russian attack on mining operations in the region, a critical hub for Ukraine’s coal industry and for heating during the current winter freeze. The attack came despite a partial, short-term truce that Russia agreed to last week at President Trump’s request and despite plans for a second round of trilateral peace talks in the United Arab Emirates that was supposed to start on Sunday.

Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the agreement applied only to Kyiv and that it would expire today; U.S. and Russian negotiators met in Florida on Saturday without the Ukrainians and the second round was postponed until Wednesday and Thursday. Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine’s power infrastructure this winter, which the Times described as the coldest in more than a decade.

An initial massive strike on Jan. 9 left half of Kyiv without heat, and subsequent strikes on Jan. 20 and Jan. 24 again plunged much of the capital into darkness.

russian drone strike dnipropetrovsk, dtek bus attack, dnipropetrovsk region, miners killed in ukraine, ukraine coal industry, power grid attacks, trilateral peace talks abu dhabi, president trump truce, dmitri s. peskov, volodymyr zelensky, railway infrastructure strikes, vyacheslav volodin