Zelenskyy says strike on kindergarten shows Putin isn’t serious about talks
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
By MARIA VARENIKOVA
Russia on Wednesday unleashed a broad attack that hit Ukrainian power plants, a kindergarten and other sites, killing six people. The barrage came hours after President Donald Trump said he was putting off a planned meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia to avoid a “wasted” effort toward ending the war.
Trump had said late last week that he would meet soon with Putin in Hungary to continue peace talks. But on Tuesday, after discussions between American and Russian officials, the White House said no summit meeting was planned “in the immediate future.”
The Trump administration announced the delay after Russian officials made clear they would not budge from their maximalist demands to halt their invasion of Ukraine, again rejecting a proposal for a ceasefire that freezes the current front lines.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine on Wednesday showed that the Kremlin “clearly doesn’t feel enough pressure to stop prolonging the war.”
A video shared by Zelenskyy on social media showed emergency workers and frightened-looking parents carrying children close to their chests as they fled a burning kindergarten after a Russian attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv. One man had two children in his arms as he ran from the school, in which the second floor collapsed.
A local nongovernmental organization said the strike took place around 11 a.m., and authorities said three drones had hit the kindergarten.
All 48 children in the building had been taken to an underground shelter before the strike, in response to air raid sirens. One person who had been passing by the building at the moment of the strike was killed, and nine people were injured, authorities said. No children were injured.
The Russian barrage in other parts of Ukraine prompted nationwide power restrictions for industrial consumers and emergency blackouts for civilians in several regions, including the capital, Kyiv. The strikes followed a pattern in which Russia has unleashed major attacks on Ukraine after significant moments in diplomacy with the Trump administration. Russia also conducted drills on its own territory Wednesday involving nuclear weapons, including test launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the Kremlin said.
Zelenskyy reiterated Tuesday that Ukraine needed more long-range weapons to give it leverage to pressure Moscow to stop its invasion. The Ukrainian leader met with Trump at the White House on Friday but emerged from those contentious talks without a deal he was seeking to buy American long-range missiles.
While publicly supporting Trump’s efforts at peacemaking, Ukrainian officials have consistently said that Moscow will halt its attacks only if Ukraine can retaliate sufficiently.
Ukrainian analysts said they were hopeful that Trump was beginning to recognize Putin’s tactic of stringing the Americans along by agreeing to high-profile meetings that produce little in the way of results. Russian officials welcomed the proposal for a summit in Budapest, Hungary, after Trump held a call with Putin on Thursday, a day before his meeting with Zelenskyy.
“Trump realized that this meeting would be a catastrophe, and he would gain nothing but shame,” said Mykhailo Samus, director of the independent New Geopolitics Research Network in Kyiv. “But the question is, what is next? Will Putin be able to get him to such a meeting again?”
“It is important for President Trump to understand that a Nobel Peace Prize is possible only by pressuring Putin, not by shouting at Zelenskyy,” Samus added.
Trump has shown remarkable deference to Putin. The U.S. president has not followed through on his threats to punish Russia for refusing to end the war. And amid warnings from the Kremlin, he has so far not provided American Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv.
But seemingly emboldened by his role in securing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and ever focused on his publicly stated desire to win a Nobel, Trump has pushed to restart a peace process for Ukraine that had stalled after his meeting with Putin in Alaska this summer.
While Zelenskyy emerged from his talks last week with Trump without new weapons, he did secure continued U.S. support for Kyiv’s position when it comes to territory. Moscow has signaled that it is holding out for Ukraine to surrender the parts of the eastern Donetsk region still under Ukrainian control, a nonstarter for Kyiv.
Zelenskyy will meet Thursday with European leaders in Denmark to seek additional support from European nations, which have become the primary backers of Kyiv’s war effort since Trump ended direct U.S. aid. European leaders have joined with Ukraine in calling for an immediate ceasefire at the current battle lines.
Trump was scheduled to meet Wednesday in Washington with Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, which said Ukraine would be among the subjects of discussion.
Since the spring, Samus said, Russia has entered talks with one primary goal: to delay any ceasefire and to block the United States from providing long-range weapons to Ukraine.
While Putin has largely succeeded so far, the postponed meeting in Budapest showed that the Russian president may be losing his ability to rely on the same tactic again and again, Samus said.
Zelenskyy also called out the Russian tactic.
“Russia continues to do everything it can to weasel out of diplomacy,” he said on Tuesday. “As soon as the issue of long-range capabilities for us, for Ukraine, became less immediate, Russia’s interest in diplomacy faded almost automatically.”