Seventeen people, including three children, were killed in a Russian attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia on Saturday, a day after US President Donald Trump announced a deal to lift sanctions on Russian diesel in a major setback for Kyiv.

A 6-year-old girl was among those killed when one strike reduced part of an apartment block to rubble. Her grandfather, Anatoliy Chumniy, stood sobbing over her body, laid on the ground in a white bag, after rescuers pulled it from the wreckage.

“Her birthday would have been at the end of the month,” he said through tears.

Eighteen others were wounded in the attack on the industrial city, whose outskirts lie less than 30 km (20 miles) from the front line.

“Today, Russia said thank you for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in some of his sharpest criticism yet of the White House.

RUSSIA ESCALATING ATTACKS ON UKRAINIAN CITIES

It was the third mass-casualty attack on Ukraine this week.

Nearly 80 civilians were killed in Russian strikes on Wednesday and Thursday, including at least 30 killed by a bomb in the eastern garrison city of Kramatorsk and 22 others by a missile in the town of Pryluky, 80 miles east of Kyiv.

A senior official in Zaporizhzhia, Mykhailo Semikin, said Russia had hit several locations simultaneously in the early hours of Saturday.

Rescuers clambered through crumbled masonry to pull other residents of the building out alive. One man, whose leg was trapped in the rubble, screamed in pain as he was being freed.

Nataliia Malysheva, a 49-year-old local resident whose parents died in hospital after being pulled from the rubble, was torn by grief and rage.

“If (the Russians) have money, they’ll be able to carry on fighting us,” she said. “How many lives have been lost here, how many homes have been destroyed? How many innocent people have died in the meantime?”

Zaporizhzhia, with a pre-war population of over 700,000, has been a regular target of Russian bombardment with strikes intensifying in the past few months.

“Last night provided yet more confirmation that Russia perceives any easing of pressure as a signal that it can supposedly keep fighting, that it can supposedly keep dropping bombs on cities. Different signals are needed,” Zelenskiy said.

A missile attack on Saturday afternoon also hit a restaurant, wounding seven people, in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

Russian drones swirled in the skies over Kyiv throughout the day, part of a vast new wave of bombardment of the capital, the heaviest since the early days of the war.

TRUMP LIFTS DIESEL SANCTIONS

Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports comes as his administration seeks to curb fuel prices, which have risen sharply during the US conflict with Iran.

Kyiv had instead urged Washington to increase pressure on Moscow in an effort to force it into serious negotiations to end the four-and-a-half-year war.

Trump, meanwhile, has criticised Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, which he claims have driven up global prices. Kyiv has said it wants a total halt on all energy strikes by both sides as Moscow pummels Ukraine’s power grid.

On Saturday, parts of Kyiv and the surrounding region were left without power, bringing the city’s metro trains to a complete halt for the second time this week.

The latest strikes came after Ukrainian and European officials held talks with US negotiators in Miami on Friday aimed at developing a common proposal for ending the war, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

Trump announced the diesel deal while the negotiations were underway, a move Zelenskiy said caught Kyiv by surprise.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said after a call with Trump that an immediate resumption of ‌peace ⁠talks was unlikely, citing Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow.

Four civilians were killed and five others were wounded as a result of Ukrainian attacks on the Russian-controlled Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, the Russian-installed governor said on Saturday.

Reuters could not independently verify the report and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

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(Reporting by Sergiy Chalyi in Zaporizhzhia and Max Hunder in Lviv, additional reporting by Dan PeleschukEditing by Ros Russell and Gareth Jones)