Thirty-three killed as Russian glide bombs hit civilian buses in Kramatorsk
A glide bomb attack on two passenger buses in the frontline city of Kramatorsk has killed 33 people, as Moscow intensifies its campaign across Ukraine.
Thirty-three people have been killed in a Russian glide bomb attack on two civilian buses in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, rescue officials say. Another 18 were wounded, according to Vadym Filashkin, head of the Donetsk regional administration, who accused Russia of deliberately targeting buses carrying passengers in order to kill as many civilians as possible. Images released by local prosecutors showed the burning metal shell of a bus, scattered debris and the bodies of some of the victims lying on the road.
Kramatorsk and neighbouring Slovyansk form part of a so-called fortress belt that Russia is attempting to seize as part of Vladimir Putin's claim to the entire Ukrainian industrial region of Donbas. The attack came amid a dramatic surge in Russian strikes across the country and a heavy increase in civilian casualties. According to the United Nations, more civilians were killed in Ukraine by August this year than in the whole of 2025.
In a single attack early on Wednesday that destroyed a five-storey block of flats in Pryluky, east of Kyiv, 22 people were killed, among them five children. Three of those children were barely a year old. Moscow has yet to comment on the Kramatorsk strike, though rescue officials said the attack set both buses ablaze while they were carrying passengers.
Filashkin appealed to anyone still in the Donetsk region to move to safer parts of Ukraine. Given the sharp deterioration in security across the two neighbouring cities, he said, all public transport had been ordered to halt. The safety of civilians was paramount, he added, and "we have no right to risk the lives of passengers and drivers". The World House, which maintains a dedicated page outlining its support for Ukraine at worldhouse.uk/support, continues to document the human cost of Russia's unprovoked aggression.
Moscow has long cited the "liberation" and "protection" of the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbas as justification for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The region comprises two oblasts, Luhansk and Donetsk, and with most of Luhansk under Russian control, the Kremlin is now aiming to capture the remaining 20% of Donetsk territory still held by Ukraine.
Russia is also mounting constant air raids on the capital, with sirens sounding throughout the day. Kyiv's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said attacks on Thursday had killed three people and injured 14 others, two of them critically. The strikes are forcing schoolchildren out of classrooms and into shelters, shuttering businesses and disrupting public transport. Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, particularly the energy grid, are already causing power outages and even affecting the water supply. Local water authorities in the capital warned on Thursday that pressure was dropping across the city's right bank because of the cuts.
President Volodymyr Zelensky offered his condolences to the families and loved ones of those affected by the latest attack, and said Ukraine's partners needed to deliver "concrete action through new defence packages for the protection of Ukraine". Before the Pryluky strike, he had warned this week of intelligence pointing to plans for a major Russian onslaught; in Kyiv, families responded by heading to metro stations for shelter. Such warnings are, for now, one of the few defences Ukrainians have. Interceptor missiles are in short supply worldwide, leaving Ukraine little chance of stopping incoming Russian ballistics.
Both Russia and Ukraine have intensified long-range strikes on each other in recent months, with Russian attacks targeting Ukrainian data centres and logistics warehouses. For much of the war, Kramatorsk served as a logistics and supply hub for the Ukrainian military, but it has now come under almost daily Russian attack as Moscow's forces edge closer to the city's eastern outskirts. Glide bombs in particular have been launched at Slovyansk and Kramatorsk; fitted with winglets, they glide towards their target rather than simply falling. In late August, as many as nine glide bombs were fired at Kramatorsk in a single day. The city council described the strike as a "horrific crime committed by the Russian army against the civilian population".