A Kramatorsk bus strike on Thursday morning, Oct. 8, 2026, killed 33 people and wounded 18 when a Russian guided glide bomb hit a street in the eastern Ukrainian city where two passenger buses were traveling, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said, according to Ukrinform. Both buses caught fire.
The attack in the Donetsk region came a day after a Russian cruise missile destroyed an apartment block in Pryluky, where the death toll has since risen to 22, and as air raids continued over Kyiv. Moscow did not immediately comment on the Kramatorsk strike. Russia denies targeting civilians, Al Jazeera reported, citing AFP and Reuters.
What happened in the Kramatorsk bus strike
According to Ukrinform, Russian forces struck Kramatorsk at about 10 a.m. local time with a UMPB D-30 SN guided bomb. The munition landed on a street where two buses were moving, setting both vehicles and a nearby open area on fire. Early reports put the dead at 12. The Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office raised the figure to 30 shortly after midday, and the State Emergency Service later reported 33 killed.
Photos released by local prosecutors showed the burned-out shell of a bus, debris and victims on the road, the BBC reported. President Volodymyr Zelensky described the site as a bus stop. Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin accused Russia of deliberately targeting passenger buses because a single strike can kill many people. Kramatorsk City Council called the attack a crime against civilians and said there were no military targets at the location.
Public transport halted in Kramatorsk and Slovyansk
Filashkin said all public transport in Kramatorsk and neighboring Slovyansk had been ordered to stop because of a sharp deterioration in security, saying authorities could not risk the lives of passengers and drivers, according to the BBC. He again urged residents still living in the Donetsk region to move to safer parts of Ukraine.
Kramatorsk and Slovyansk are part of what is often called Ukraine’s “fortress belt,” a chain of cities in Donetsk still under Kyiv’s control. Russia claims the entire region and has demanded that Ukraine withdraw from the remaining territory before fighting stops, a demand Kyiv rejects. The pace of Russia’s battlefield gains in the region has slowed this year, Reuters reported, but Russian forces have moved close to Kramatorsk’s eastern edge.
Glide bombs, which are conventional bombs fitted with wings and guidance kits so aircraft can release them from a distance, have become a constant threat to both cities. The BBC noted that as many as nine were fired at Kramatorsk in a single day in late August. Ukrainian troops have pushed back in parts of the region, as described in our report on Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi in Donetsk villages.
Pryluky death toll rises to 22
The Kramatorsk attack followed Wednesday’s large missile and drone barrage on Kyiv and about a dozen other regions, covered in our report on the Russia mass attack on Ukraine and Pryluky. Rescuers in Pryluky, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Kyiv in the Chernihiv region, kept searching the rubble on Thursday as the toll climbed to 22, including five children, with 54 people injured, the Associated Press reported, citing the State Emergency Service. Zelensky said a cruise missile directly hit the five-story building.
In Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Thursday’s attacks killed three people and injured 14, according to the BBC. Water officials warned that pressure was dropping on the capital’s right bank because of power cuts, adding to damage left by earlier Russia Kyiv power grid strikes.
Long-range strikes continue on both sides
Ukraine pressed its own long-range campaign. Russian technology company Yandex said a drone caused a fire at one of its data centers in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow, according to France 24 and Al Jazeera. A former head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation said Kyiv was responsible. Russian strikes in recent months have hit Ukrainian data centers and logistics warehouses.
Zelensky offered condolences to the victims’ families and said Ukraine’s partners needed to provide “concrete action through new defence packages for the protection of Ukraine.” The United Nations has said more civilians were killed in Ukraine by August of this year than in all of 2025, the BBC reported. Interceptor missiles are in short supply worldwide, leaving Ukraine with limited means to stop incoming Russian ballistic missiles.