KYIV — Russian drones attacked coal mining facilities in southeastern Ukraine on Sunday, killing at least 12 miners heading home after finishing their shift. The attack came days after President Donald Trump said he had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for a partial pause in attacks, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said would apply only to Kyiv, the capital, and would end Sunday.
Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have plunged thousands of apartment buildings in Kyiv and beyond into cold and darkness amid low temperatures.
The drone attack Sunday struck a bus carrying mineworkers in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, injuring at least 15 in addition to the 12 killed and causing a fire that was later extinguished, Ukraine’s emergency services said in a statement.
It was “part of a large-scale Russian attack” that targeted facilities belonging to DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, according to a statement from the company.
DTEK chief executive Maxim Timchenko said in a post to X that the attack had made Sunday the deadliest day of the war for the company, which said it had previously lost seven workers since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
DTEK officials did not say how many drones were involved or what specifically was targeted. Russia’s embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to queries about the attack or the status of the pause.
“These were ordinary working people, returning to their families in Dnipropetrovsk region, struck far from any frontline,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko wrote on social media.
The attack was “a demonstrative crime, which once again shows that it is Russia that is responsible for the escalation” in the conflict, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his regular evening address, posted on his Telegram channel.
Amid the uncertainty over the terms of the tenuous, Trump-brokered Russian pause announced Thursday, which Zelensky told journalists he was willing to reciprocate, the attack shows that Moscow’s deadly aerial campaign against Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure this winter has not abated.
While temperatures are consistently well below freezing — and are expected to plummet even further in the coming day — Kremlin forces have pummeled Ukraine’s energy system, leaving millions to face the elements without power.
On Sunday, Ukrainian forces received an apparent boost from an unexpected source: Elon Musk, who wrote on X that his company had successfully taken steps “to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia,” referring to his satellite-linked internet service, which is crucial to Ukraine’s war effort.
Musk was responding to Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who three days before said he contacted SpaceX, Musk’s company, over reports that “Russian drones equipped with Starlink connectivity were operating over Ukrainian cities” and “proposed concrete ways to resolve the issue.”
At the beginning of the war, Musk provided the Ukrainian military with free terminals and connections to Starlink, which guaranteed Kyiv’s forces crucial reliable communications and digital services.
Since then, the cooperation has expanded, financed in large part by Ukraine’s European allies.
But earlier in the year, as Washington adopted a more hard-nosed approach to Ukraine and paused billions of dollars of U.S. support, fears grew that Musk, a Trump confidant, could also cut Starlink.
On Sunday, however, Fedorov in response to Musk’s tweet said that “the first steps are already delivering real results,” and Ukraine was “working very closely with your team on the next important steps.” He thanked Musk, calling him a “true friend of the Ukrainian people.”
Sammy Westfall in Washington contributed to this report.
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