May 20 (UPI) -- Russian strikes against targets across central and eastern Ukraine overnight injured at least six people, five of them passengers on a bus hit in the southern city of Kherson.
Two women aged 65 and 45 and three men aged 62, 56 and 41 traveling aboard the municipal bus suffered blast injuries when it was struck by an attack drone in the Dnipro district of the city early Tuesday.
The sixth casualty, an 88-year-old woman, suffered head injuries and shrapnel wounds after her apartment was struck in shelling of the Korabelny area of Kherson, the city military administration said in an update on social media.
The attacks came after Russian artillery fire killed one person and injured three others in Kherson on Sunday night.
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Kherson is one of four Ukrainian provinces -- the others are Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk -- partially or wholly occupied by Russian forces. A fifth, Crimea, was annexed by Moscow in 2014.
Ukrainian Air Force Command said on its Facebook page that at least 108 Shahed-type and missile-armed BPLA drones were fired at Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Zhytomyr and Donetsk regions.
The air force said it was able to shoot down or jam 93 of the drones with assistance from other branches of the Ukrainian military using aircraft, anti-aircraft missiles and mobile fire units and electronic warfare systems.
Following a flurry of high-level international diplomatic activity on Ukraine, capped by U.S. President Donald Trump's two-hour call with his Russian counterpart Monday evening that delivered an agreement to begin talks immediately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged Tuesday that Ukraine would participate in any process that led to peace.
"There is no doubt that the war must end at the negotiating table. The proposals on the table must be clear and realistic. Ukraine is ready for any negotiation format that delivers results. But if Russia continues to put forward unrealistic conditions and undermine progress, there must be tough consequences," he wrote on X.
Zelensky said it was clear Russia was trying to buy time to continue its war and occupation and that Ukraine was working with its partners to put pressure on Russia that would force it to alter its position.
He said that he had held discussions with Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Tuesday and had conversations with other partners planned for the coming hours.
"The key point is that diplomacy aimed at peace must be well-coordinated and focused on tangible outcomes. We informed each other about our contacts with partners and discussed details of yesterday's conversation with the President of the United States," said Zelensky.
A staunch ally of Ukraine, Finland is another front-line European nation with an 830-mile-long border with Russia. However, it is a European Union member and shielded by NATO's security umbrella, joining the military alliance in 2023, a year after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
