The war in Ukraine looks set to escalate again. Sunday's deadly Russian rocket attack on the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine has made it more challenging than ever to find common ground between the two sides, to form the basis of a ceasefire or peace negotiations.

"Russia is waging deliberate war on the civilian population," Wilfried Jilge, a Ukraine expert and historian of Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), told DW.

"Sumy is a new extreme, but it's not the first. I think we still haven't grasped just how brutal this regime is, both at home and abroad."

Jilge adds that this is not the first time Russia has attacked civilian targets under false pretenses, either. On Monday, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed in a statement to media outlets that the Sumy attack had been aimed solely at military targets.

It said the Iskander missiles had struck a meeting of Ukrainian military commanders, killing 60 Ukrainian soldiers. The ministry accused Ukraine of using civilians as human shields.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense issued a statement clarifying that the Russian missiles had killed 34 people, including two children, and injured 119.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked US President Donald Trump to visit Ukraine to gain a firsthand impression of the savagery of the war. However, Trump told the press, "This is Biden's war. This is not my war." Asked whether the........

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