YAROVA, Ukraine — 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.

Zelenskiy 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 kilometers 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 the ground.

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