Russian aircraft drop nine 3,000kg bombs on Zaporizhzhia aid centre after Oleshky truce

Russian aircraft dropped at least nine 3,000kg aerial bombs on a humanitarian aid centre in the Zaporizhzhia region village of Komyshuvakha on Monday, Ukrainian officials said, in an attack President Volodymyr Zelensky presented as evidence that Moscow is rejecting de-escalation.

According to the BBC, regional head Mykhailo Semikin said the bombs struck a site used to distribute aid to residents. Zelensky said the first strike hit a local school that served humanitarian needs, and that a second wave followed, with nine more bombs falling on a shelter where people had gathered. The Kyiv Independent and Al Jazeera carried the same account from the president.

A message after the truce

Zelensky argued that Russia knew what the building was used for. “The Russians could not have been unaware” that the remaining residents collected aid there every week, he said, according to the BBC. He called the attack “utterly horrific”.

He tied the strike to the recent evacuation of civilians from the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky, carried out jointly by both sides during a temporary ceasefire brokered by US First Lady Melania Trump. After that operation, he said, there had been a moment when next steps might have shown peace to be possible. “With such killings, Russia is sending the exact opposite signal,” the BBC quoted him as saying.

Rescue work under fire

Semikin called the attack a “terrible tragedy” for the village and confirmed that people remained under the rubble, the BBC reported. He said rescuers had been forced to pause several times because Russian drones struck the area again. A day of mourning has been declared across Zaporizhzhia region for Tuesday.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the strikes destroyed a gymnasium, an outbuilding and a fire truck and damaged the school itself. Zelensky later put the number of dead at 26, two more than the service had confirmed earlier, and five people were reported injured. Officials fear the figure may rise.

The Kyiv Independent noted that Komyshuvakha lies roughly 20 kilometres from the front line and has been treated as a front-line settlement since November 2025 because of repeated guided-bomb attacks. Fitted with wing kits, such bombs can glide tens of kilometres, letting aircraft release them from beyond the reach of air defences.

Talks and the wider fighting

The attack comes as delegations from Ukraine, Russia and the United States are expected to resume peace talks within days, the BBC said. Negotiations were suspended in February, when Moscow intensified its strikes as Kyiv ran short of Western-supplied interceptors. The broadcaster said no major breakthrough is anticipated at the meeting, which is likely to take place in Abu Dhabi.

Fighting continued elsewhere. Al Jazeera reported that Ukrainian emergency services counted 12 people injured by drone strikes in the Kharkiv region and five in Odesa, where a warehouse and homes were hit. Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down 212 Ukrainian drones overnight, and the governor of Samara region said air defences repelled an attack there.

Whether the strike changes the mood ahead of the Abu Dhabi talks remains unclear. Moscow had not commented on the Komyshuvakha attack in the reports reviewed by OddsFront.