Good morning. Russia claimed that its ballistic missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy was aimed at Ukrainian army commanders. But the truth is that the attack’s brutal toll was exacted against ordinary people.
The deaths of at least 34 people made it the worst single attack on civilians in Ukraine this year. But the most Donald Trump would say was that he had been told it was a “mistake”. It appears unlikely he will take up Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s invitation, issued yesterday, to visit Ukraine and see the consequences of the invasion for himself.
If Trump’s attention appears to have shifted decisively on to his global tariff war, the consequences of his passivity on Russian aggression are becoming more and more obvious in Ukraine. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding in Kyiv about an appalling new pattern in Russian attacks, and what they have revealed about the limits on the White House’s commitment to peace. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
British Steel | Senior Labour figures have urged the government to review Chinese investment in UK infrastructure in the wake of the British Steel crisis. Downing Street and the Treasury said they believed the row to be an isolated commercial dispute, even though the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has not ruled out deliberate Chinese sabotage of the Scunthorpe plant.
Sudan | Sudan is suffering from the largest humanitarian crisis globally and its civilians are continuing to pay the price for inaction by the international community, NGOs and the UN have said, as the country’s civil war enters its third year. The UK is hosting ministers from 20 countries in London on Tuesday in an attempt to restart stalled peace talks.
Politics | The former Conservative MP Craig Williams is among 15 people, including several other senior Tories, charged by the Gambling Commission for alleged cheating connected to bets based on the date of the 2024 UK general election.
UK news | Bin workers have “overwhelmingly” rejected a deal that would have ended an all-out strike in Birmingham, during which bin bags have piled up in the streets and the city has faced an influx of rats.
Space | Six women safely completed a trip to the edge of outer space on a rocket belonging to Jeff Bezos, the Amazon co-founder. The crew included Bezos’s fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, and the pop star Katy Perry, who said on landing that she was “really feeling that divine feminine right now”.
In depth: ‘America either wants Russia to win, or doesn’t care if Ukraine loses’
The Russian ballistic missiles hit Sumy at about 10.15 local time on Sunday morning. The city centre was busy with civilians, many of them celebrating Palm Sunday or waiting for a theatre performance. University buildings, homes and a church were among those hit by the two strikes; a crowded bus was also hit, the Kyiv Independent reported. At least 34 people, including two children, were killed, with another 117 injured.
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What made the attack so egregious?
A military awards ceremony was reportedly under way in Sumy at the time the missiles hit, and Russia claimed that it had hit a meeting of Ukrainian military leaders. But video and eyewitness evidence suggests this was an attack whose victims were overwhelmingly civilians, with no serious military purpose to the bombing.
“These were civilians doing normal things on a Sunday morning,” Luke Harding said. “Going to church, going to the shops, using public transport. This isn’t the frontline or a tank factory. It’s like aiming a missile at a British high street.” Germany’s incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz, described the attack as a “deliberate and calculated war crime”, citing reports that the second missile struck as emergency workers attended to victims of the first.
Ukrainian officials said the second missile appeared to have been filled with cluster munitions – explosives that are dispersed in the air over a large area and are particularly deadly for civilians. They are banned by many countries under an international convention because of their indiscriminate impact but have been used extensively by Russia (and to a lesser extent by Ukraine) during the conflict.
Civilians in Sumy are acutely vulnerable to ballistic missile attack, because of the speed with which the missiles arrive. “It’s about a 15-minute drive from the Russian border,” Luke said. “In Kyiv, you get a bit of warning, you can decide whether to take yourself underground. But there’s no air raid siren somewhere like Sumy – the thing just lands. You can’t hide or fling yourself behind cover – it’s a gruesome game of roulette.”
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Is the attack part of a wider pattern?
Last week, a Russian missile hit in Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city of Kryvyi Rih, killing 19 people including nine children. Again, Russia said that it had launched a “precision strike” against a meeting of soldiers and western military instructors at a restaurant, but the bomb hit within a short distance of a playground.
Ukrainian civilian casualties have steadily increased throughout the war, and have risen sharply since ceasefire talks brokered by the US began last month, the United Nations said, with 164 dead and 910 injured – rising 50% in March against February and 71% against the same month last year. The UN also said that loitering munitions – single-use warheads also known as kamikaze drones, designed to hover over potential targets until the optimal opportunity to strike – struck three hospitals in the same period, adding that because multiple drones hit the hospitals they may have been deliberately targeted.
“It is an appalling pattern,” Luke said. “Every week there is a strike like this. We can expect these attacks to continue, and in another week or two weeks we’ll be talking about the same thing somewhere else.”
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Why is Russia doing it?
In this analysis piece, Guardian defence editor Dan Sabbagh writes that “a daytime city-centre attack, in the full knowledge that civilians will be present, reflects a Russian culture of impunity that has been allowed to endure without effective challenge”. And while Russia generally insists that such attacks are carried out with some military target in mind, the real purpose is straightforward, Luke said. “The overall strategy now is to immiserate Ukrainians, to the point where they say: we can’t beat Russia, this is pointless. They want them to turn on their government and demand peace on any terms.”
Higher proportions of Ukrainians support a negotiated end to the war than in the early days, with larger numbers prepared to cede some territory to secure peace. But half of the country still says that no territory should be given up under any circumstances. The vast majority believe that Russia will not stop at the territory it already occupies.
There is very little support for any deal that threatens Ukraine’s political independence. But that is what Vladimir Putin is referring to when he says that the “root causes” of the crisis must be removed for a ceasefire to be viable – a commitment to Nato’s future political “neutrality”, with the implication that regime change in Kyiv is a necessary condition.
“I don’t think they will succeed in turning Ukrainians against their government,” Luke said. “But the message is cynical, and really rather chilling – we will continue this war, we are masters of the situation, we can kill civilians, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
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How has the US reacted?
Donald Trump is now preoccupied with his chaotic tariff war – but the backdrop of the United States’ new approach to the war in Ukraine remains the crucial context for Russia’s recent actions. “Russia is very confident that there will be no meaningful response from Trump, whatever they do,” Luke said.
After the Kryvyi Rih attack, US ambassador Bridget Brink did not ascribe blame to Russia, simply saying that “a ballistic missile struck”. Brink, who has been in post for three years and is viewed as a staunch advocate for US military assistance to Kyiv, has since announced that she is stepping down, and condemned the Sumy attack more clearly: “Russia launched ballistic missiles on Sumy,” she wrote on social media. “Reports indicate, as in Kryvyi Rih, cluster munitions were used, increasing the devastation and harm to civilians.”
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, was even clearer in his condemnation: “Today’s Palm Sunday attack by Russian forces on civilian targets in Sumy crosses any line of decency,” he said, adding: “It is why President Trump is working hard to end this war.” Trump himself would only say that he had been told that the Sumy strike was a “mistake”.
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How should we interpret those messages?
The fact Brink has spoken more directly now that her departure has been announced tells its own story – while Kellogg appears to have been wholly marginalised. Much more significant was the fact that Steve Witkoff, officially Trump’s Middle East envoy but apparently the man he trusts to deal with Moscow, met with Vladimir Putin for the third time this year on Friday. Reuters reported that Witkoff told Trump the best way to secure a peace deal is to give Russia the Ukrainian land it has illegally annexed.
“Witkoff seems more pro-Kremlin than the Kremlin,” Luke said. “The truth is that America either wants Russia to win, or doesn’t care if Ukraine loses. On a strategic level, they are much more concerned with a wide-ranging reset, covering Greenland, operations in the Arctic, space, sanctions relief for oligarchs, and mutual economic projects in which Ukraine is only a small file.”
Some may still hope that Moscow’s escalation of military operations might irk Trump to the extent that he changes course. But there is so far no evidence that that will happen, Luke said. “When Trump came into office, there was a hope among some people close to Zelenskyy – by no means all of them – that it might be possible to persuade him that he should not accept being treated like a loser by Moscow. But it has become clear that that hope was an illusion.”
What else we’ve been reading
Nesrine Malik is a must-read on the opportunity presented by Trump’s second-term meltdown to imagine a post-America world: “The pursuit of liberty and the pursuit of happiness … the Obama hope iconography; all resonant and powerful touchstones. They are now reduced to dust. It is one thing to know that the US was never the sum of these parts, but another to accept it.” Sam Coare, newsletters team
The Nobel prize winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who has died at the age of 89, lived an astonishing life, ranging from an elopement with his aunt by marriage aged 19 to a serious run at the Peruvian presidency. Nick Caistor’s obituary is riveting. Archie
Having spent my Sunday night binging the new season of Black Mirror (anyone else finding it … not so good?), Keith Stuart’s piece on the episode Plaything and the real-life similarities of its central plot served as an intriguing epilogue – and a fun glance back at magazine culture in the 90s. Sam
If Black Mirror’s dystopias leave you cold, you may be persuaded of their force by this excellent Sam Freedman piece, which argues compellingly that science fiction is increasingly influential on the dark visions of American tech moguls who completely miss the point of the original text. You can probably guess who he’s talking about. Archie
Michael Hann tells the story of “the Citizen Kane of rock movies” – AKA the movie that nearly destroyed Slade – in this great retrospective of Slade in Flame on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Sam
Sport
Football | Antoine Semenyo (above) scored after just 52 seconds to end Bournemouth’s barren run with a 1-0 victory against Fulham in the Premier League.
Formula One | Senior figures at Red Bull held crisis talks after the Bahrain Grand Prix finished with a deeply dissatisfied Max Verstappen languishing in sixth place. But the team principal, Christian Horner, admitted there will be no quick fix.
Snooker | Jackson Page has received a £147,000 bonus after becoming the first snooker player to compile two 147 breaks in the same match in Sheffield on Monday. The 23-year-old from Ebbw Vale achieved the unique feat in the third round of world championship qualifying.
The front pages
Tuesday’s splash in the Guardian print edition is “Urgent review of China’s role in UK vital, Labour figures tell PM”. The i has “China threatens British jobs over steel sabotage row with Labour”. The Times dishes out blame: “Miliband signed up to close ties with China on energy”. “Charged? You bet” – that’s the Mirror on the “election date gamble scandal”. The Telegraph has “Unions threaten to spread bin strikes”, while the Daily Mail goes with “Bin strike grinds on as Labour humiliated”. The Financial Times runs with “Bond market freezes out higher-risk borrowers since Trump’s tariffs blitz”. “Look at the moon … Oh my God we’re in space” – Katy Perry and friends blast off in the Metro. “They helped us retain our humanity” – the Express marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen with a quote from a survivor of the Nazi death camp.
Today in Focus
The scramble to save British Steel
What does the British Steel crisis reveal about the UK’s critical infrastructure? Jasper Jolly reports
Cartoon of the day | Ben Jennings
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Artistic inspiration can come from anywhere. But like countless auteurs of centuries past, Edinburgh artist Keith Crawley found inspiration in the pub.
On a whim, the 55-year-old recreated his local in miniature form – and what started as “a bit of fun” has now become a serious project. He has recreated 12 of his favourite pubs in pint-sized form, using Google Earth for research, computer-aided design, Photoshop and 3D printers in his process before sticking everything together.
“I got sucked in,” he says. “It’s like Pokémon – you feel like you then have to make mini versions of all the pubs.”
To keep up with Crawley, you can follow him on @kiwikaboodle on Instagram. As Crawley says: “It’s quite special when you get people who have been to these places commenting and hearing a wee bit of history about the place.”
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
