A deadly Russian bomb strike ripped through the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing at least 33 people in what authorities said was a deliberate attack on civilians in a strategic stronghold coveted by Moscow.
Officials said another 18 people were wounded in one of the biggest single assaults of the year. The blast hit a street where police reported that two city buses were in service at the moment of the strike.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the impact site was a bus stop.
Police images shared online showed bodies lying amid scattered wreckage, along with the blackened frame of what appeared to be a bus.
“For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible,” regional governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram app.
Russia denies targeting civilians, even as it has repeatedly battered Ukrainian cities, towns and other sites since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Local officials say Moscow has intensified drone and guided-bomb attacks on Kramatorsk and other cities in Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt” — a chain of heavily defended urban areas that underpins Ukraine’s positions in the Donetsk region.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine hand over the remainder of the region still under Kyiv’s control as a condition for ending the fighting, a demand Ukraine has refused. Officials say the tempo of Moscow’s battlefield advances in the area has slowed markedly this year.
Mr Filashkin said he ordered authorities in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, another pivotal fortress-belt city, to suspend public transport, arguing that “we have no right to risk” citizens’ lives.
Separately, Kyiv was hit by morning drone strikes that killed three people and injured 14, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The capital has faced recurring waves of Russian attacks as Ukraine grapples with a shortage of air defences.
The latest strikes followed a day after a large-scale Russian air assault across Ukraine left dozens dead, with the country’s power grid the main target.
