A Russian drone attack on a bus in northeastern Ukraine killed at least nine people and injured seven others, Ukrainian officials said Saturday, just hours after the two countries met for the first direct peace talk in three years.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy has reacted to a Russian attack on an evacuation bus in the Sumy region. He stressed that if Russian President Vladimir Putin is truly seeking peace, Moscow must immediately agree to a full ceasefire.

During Friday's negotiations in Istanbul, the Russian delegation demanded that Ukrainian armed forces leave those parts of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions that Russia has not managed to capture,

Ukraine rallied support from its Western allies on Friday after Kyiv and Moscow failed to agree to a ceasefire at their first direct talks in more than three years, with Russia presenting conditions that a Ukrainian source described as "non-starters".

Many Russian soldiers say they would see a cease-fire along the current front lines as a failure, hinting at the nationalist discontent the Kremlin could face in accepting a cease-fire.

Russia and Ukraine agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war from each side, Defence Minister Rustem Umerov told Ukrainian TV on Friday as talks in Istanbul ended. If the exchange goes ahead, it would be the biggest prisoner swap in more than three years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia and Ukraine agreed Friday to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, the head of Russia’s delegation Vladimir Medinsky said after their peace talks ended. Such an exchange would be their biggest POW swap since the start of the war in 2022.