Horror as buses are destroyed by Russian strike, killing at least 30 passengers in Ukrainian frontline town

DAILYMAIL.COM • 6h ago

By SABRINA PENTY, FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER 11:42 08 Oct 2026, updated 11:49 08 Oct 2026

At least 30 people have been killed in Ukraine after Russia struck two passenger buses.

Dozens more were injured on Thursday morning after the vehicles were hit with a glide bomb in Kramatorsk, near the frontline in eastern Ukraine, national police said.

The local prosecutor’s office had previously put the death toll at 12, but local authorities were still trying to determine figures.

Images shared by the prosecutor’s office showed bodies and debris strewn across a road in front of the burning metal shell of a bus.

Kramatorsk is one of the key cities that Russia has not yet captured in the eastern Donetsk region, which Moscow claims as its own.

It has been a logistics and supply hub for the Ukrainian military for much of the war and is part of the so-called ‘fortress belt’ which troops are fighting to keep hold of.

Russian forces have edged close to the city’s eastern edge, which has prompted calls for civilians who remain to relocate to safer regions of Ukraine.

Kramatorsk City Council said it was ‘yet another horrific crime committed by the Russian army against the civilian population’.

‘Once again, the Russians have struck a location where there are absolutely no military targets,’ it added.

Thursday’s strike came a day after a Russian missile hit an apartment block in the northern region of Chernigiv, killing 22, including five children.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had warned the previous day that intelligence services had concluded that Russia was building up for a ‘massive’ strike.

Although Ukraine knew about the looming attack, which coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday, it couldn’t repel it completely.

‘This is the ‘gift’ that Putin gave himself for his birthday: the killing of children, the killing of people,’ Zelensky said in an evening address on Wednesday.

The deaths and damage illustrated the difficulty Ukraine has in countering Russia’s ballistic missiles and the new jet-powered drones used in Moscow’s escalating bombardments.

Without ammunition for its US-made Patriot air defense systems, Ukraine can’t stop Russian ballistic weapons. It is racing to develop a new generation of interceptors fast enough to catch Moscow’s high-flying jet-propelled drones.

Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a long-range aerial war as their armies remain largely deadlocked on the battlefield, more than four years after Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbour.

The unrelenting aerial attacks are hurting Russia but could be ruinous for smaller Ukraine.

US-led peace efforts appear unlikely to bring any short-term relief, with the possibility of holding low-level technical talks still under discussion.

Putin, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with the invasion in the belief that Ukrainians will buckle under the pressure and Kyiv’s Western supporters won’t stay the course, Western analysts say.

‘Russia is pursuing a deliberate strategy of terror,’ European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X.

‘Trying to make daily life impossible for Ukrainians who want to live in peace.’

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