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Ukrainian rescue officials reported that a Russian glide bomb attack destroyed two passenger buses in Kramatorsk, claiming 33 lives with another 18 people injured in the assault that occurred on Thursday. Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin stated that the strike appeared deliberately aimed at a vehicle carrying civilians in an effort to inflict maximum casualties. Local prosecutors released images showing the burned wreckage of one bus alongside scattered debris and victims on the roadway, according to a BBC News dispatch.
Filashkin, speaking after the incident, urged any remaining residents in the Donetsk region to evacuate to safer areas of the country amid the persistent threat of bombardment. The cities of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk form a key segment of a defensive network that Russian forces have sought to overrun as part of efforts to control the Donbas industrial zone, a Ukrainian assessment found. President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on Telegram to offer condolences to the families of those killed and pressed Ukraine’s international partners to deliver concrete action in response.
The Kramatorsk strike forms part of a broader escalation that Ukrainian officials have linked to a dramatic rise in both attack frequency and civilian deaths over recent weeks. Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi placed the nationwide death toll from a large-scale Russian missile and drone barrage on Oct. 7 at 28, including 20 fatalities from a residential building strike in Pryluky that claimed five children among the victims. A separate Reuters account from September described a Russian drone hitting a passenger bus in the Dnipropetrovsk region, an assault that killed five people and wounded seven others near the southern front line.
Zelensky described the Oct. 7 wave of more than 70 missiles and dozens of attack drones as one of Russia’s most vile strikes, noting that it coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s birthday and targeted residential areas in Kyiv, Oleksandria and Kremenchuk in addition to Pryluky. The Ukrainian air force logged 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles in that barrage, according to an Al Jazeera compilation of official tallies. Emergency services continue recovery operations at multiple sites from that series of attacks, with the toll in Pryluky alone later revised upward as additional bodies were recovered.
Ukrainian General Staff data placed the number of Russian airstrikes over the preceding 24 hours at 74, accompanied by nearly 9,000 kamikaze drones and more than 2,400 shelling incidents across various front-line directions. The Institute for the Study of War assessment of the Oct. 6-7 strikes estimated at least 135 civilians killed or wounded nationwide, including a minimum of four children, while noting continued Russian reliance on long-range weapons amid limited ground gains. Moscow’s defence ministry, in statements carried by Russian outlets, described the operations as targeting Ukrainian military-industrial sites involved in missile and drone production.
No immediate comment on the Kramatorsk bus strike has emerged from Russian officials, consistent with their pattern of silence on individual civilian incidents reported by Kyiv. The Prosecutor General’s Office has initiated war crimes investigations into both the latest bus attack and the preceding day’s barrage, Ukrainian authorities stated. Regional administrations have pledged support measures for surviving family members while reiterating calls for residents in high-risk zones to seek shelter elsewhere in the country.
