Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he will meet the head of Myanmar’s junta in Bangkok this week to push for the extension of a ceasefire between the military government and rebel groups to help earthquake relief.

As the chair of the regional ASEAN bloc this year, Anwar said the meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Thursday was being held on humanitarian grounds, as there continued to be no formal engagements between Myanmar and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Myanmar was hit by a devastating earthquake last month that killed thousands and caused significant damage.

“I thank General Min Aung Hlaing for responding positively to our call… During my meeting with him on April 17, I will push for the ceasefire to be extended,” Anwar said on Monday.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since early 2021, when the military’s overthrow of an elected civilian government sparked a civil war.

The junta and rebel groups have announced unilateral ceasefires to support the quake relief, but have accused each other of violating the agreements.

ASEAN wants Myanmar to implement the bloc’s five-point peace plan to halt the fighting, and has barred the ruling generals from attending its meetings over their failure to comply.

Anwar said Malaysia will continue its humanitarian assistance for the earthquake-hit country through a temporary field hospital run by the Malaysian Armed Forces.

Min Aung Hlaing attended a summit in Bangkok earlier this month, a rare foreign trip for the leader who has been largely shunned internationally since the 2021 coup.

Russia on Monday claimed its deadly missile attack on Ukraine’s Sumy that killed and wounded scores including children had targeted a gathering of Ukrainian troops, while European leaders condemned the attack as a war crime.

Ukrainian officials have said two ballistic missiles on Palm Sunday morning hit the heart of Sumy, a city about 30 kilometers (less than 20 miles) from Ukraine’s border with Russia, killing at least 34, including two children, and wounding 119. It was the second large-scale attack to claim civilian lives in Ukraine in just over a week.

Asked about the attack, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia’s military only strikes military targets. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strike targeted a gathering of senior military officers and accused Kyiv of using civilians as shields by holding military meetings in the city’s center.

The ministry claimed to kill over 60 troops. Russia gave no evidence to back its claims.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a global response to the attack, saying the first strike hit university buildings and the second exploded above street level. “Only real pressure on Russia can stop this. We need tangible sanctions against those sectors that finance the Russian killing machine,” he wrote Monday on social media.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, called the attacks “Russia’s mocking answer” to Kyiv’s agreement to a ceasefire proposed by the U.S. over a month ago.

“I hope that President Trump, the U.S. administration, see that the leader of Russia is mocking their goodwill, and I hope the right decisions are taken,” Sikorski told reporters in Luxembourg, where EU foreign ministers met.

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen noted that the attack on Sumy came shortly after President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, was in Saint Petersburg for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It demonstrates that “Russia shows full disregard for the peace process, but also that Russia has zero regard for human life,” Valtonen said.

Lithuania’s foreign minister, Kestutis Budrys, echoed Ukraine’s assertion that the Russian strike used cluster munitions to target civilians, calling it “a war crime by definition.” The Associated Press has been unable to verify that claim.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the attack shows that Putin has no intention of agreeing to a ceasefire, and called for the European Union to “take the toughest sanctions against Russia to suffocate its economy and prevent it from fueling its war effort.”

The EU has imposed 16 rounds of sanctions on Russia and is working on a 17th, but the measures are getting harder to agree on because they also impact European economies.

Germany’s chancellor-designate, Friedrich Merz, described the Sumy attack as “a serious war crime” during an appearance on ARD television.

Merz made clear he stands by his past calls to send Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, something that outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz refused to do. He said the Ukrainian military needs to be able to “get ahead of the situation” and that any delivery of long-range missiles must be done in consultation with European partners.

Asked about Merz’s statement, the Kremlin spokesman said such a move would “inevitably lead only to further escalation of the situation around Ukraine,” telling reporters that “regrettably, European capitals aren’t inclined to search for ways to launch peace talks and are inclined instead to keep provoking the continuation of the war.”

Russian forces this month have dropped 2,800 air bombs on Ukraine and fired more than 1,400 strike drones and nearly 60 missiles of various types.

The attack on Sumy followed a April 4 missile strike on Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih that killed some 20 people, including nine children.

Trump has previously described the strike on Sumy as a “mistake.” On Monday, he said the mistake was allowing the war to start in the first place, criticizing former President Joe Biden, Zelenskyy and Putin.

“Biden could’ve stopped it and Zelenskyy could’ve stopped it and Putin should’ve never started it,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Everybody’s to blame.”

Late Sunday, Russian exploding drones attacked Odesa, injuring eight people. Regional head Oleh Kiper said a medical facility was among the buildings damaged.

Russia fired a total of 62 Shahed drones over Ukraine late Sunday and early Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, adding that 40 were destroyed and 11 others jammed.

India and China have held one round of talks on resuming direct passenger air services, but no dates have been fixed yet, New Delhi said on Monday, as relations continued to thaw five years after a deadly border clash.

The neighbours agreed in January to work on resolving trade and economic differences, in a move expected to boost their aviation sectors, particularly China’s, which has lagged behind other countries in rebounding from the Covid pandemic.

“The civil aviation ministry and our counterpart in China have had one round of meetings,” Civil Aviation Secretary Vumlunmang Vualnam said at a conference organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce in New Delhi.

There were still some issues to resolve, he added, without going into detail.

Relations soured between India and China in the wake of the 2020 clash between troops along their border in the Himalayas, which killed at least 20 Indian soldiers and four Chinese.

India imposed restrictions on Chinese companies investing in the country, banned hundreds of popular apps and cut passenger routes, although direct cargo flights continued.

Relations have improved since an agreement in October to ease a military standoff on the mountainous border, the same month that President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks in Russia.