Russian airstrike on east Ukraine village kills 24 pensioners

A Russian airstrike killed 24 elderly people who were collecting pensions in a village in eastern Ukraine, officials said on Tuesday, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to urge Kyiv's allies to increase pressure on Moscow to end its war. Russian troops have pressed a grinding offensive across much of the eastern Donetsk region as diplomatic efforts to achieve peace in the 3-1/2-year-old war have largely stalled. Zelensky said a guided bomb had struck the village of Yarova, about 15 miles (24 km) from the city of Sloviansk, a Ukrainian stronghold, and several kilometres behind the front line. "Directly on people. Ordinary civilians. At the very moment when pensions were being disbursed," he wrote on X alongside footage showing bodies strewn across...