Russian Glide Bomb Hits Two Buses in Kramatorsk, Killing 33 and Halting Public Transit in Two Frontline Cities

A Russian glide bomb struck two passenger buses in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Thursday morning, killing 33 people and wounding 18, according to Ukrainian rescue and regional officials. It was one of the deadliest single attacks on civilians this year.

A toll that kept climbing

The first reports were smaller. President Volodymyr Zelensky initially said 12 people had died in a strike on a bus stop, the Kyiv Independent reported. By the afternoon, the Donetsk regional prosecutor's office put the toll at 30, according to AFP, and rescue officials later raised it to 33, the BBC reported. Photos released by police showed a burned-out bus and debris across the street.

Donetsk regional governor Vadym Filashkin accused Russia of deliberately going after buses. "For them (the Russians), a bus with passengers is an attractive target precisely because one strike can kill as many people as possible," he wrote on Telegram, as quoted by Reuters. He ordered public transport halted in Kramatorsk and in nearby Sloviansk, saying officials had "no right to risk" residents' lives. Kramatorsk City Council called the attack a "horrific crime." Moscow had not commented as of Thursday, the BBC said.

Why Kramatorsk is under fire

Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are part of what Ukrainian officials call the "fortress belt," the chain of cities at the heart of Ukraine's remaining defenses in the Donetsk region. For much of the war Kramatorsk served as a military logistics hub. As Russian forces have moved closer, the city has come under near-daily drone and guided-bomb attacks. Glide bombs are fitted with small wings so they can be released from a distance and glide to their target. The BBC reported that as many as nine were fired at Kramatorsk on a single day in late August. Less than a week earlier, on Oct. 2, a Russian drone hit a passenger bus in the city and injured two people, the Kyiv Independent reported.

A deadly week

The bus strike came a day after a Russian cruise missile hit a five-story apartment building in Pryluky, in the northern Chernihiv region. Ukraine's State Emergency Service said Thursday that the death toll there had risen to 22, including five children, and that 54 people were injured, the AP reported. That strike was part of a large missile and drone barrage on Kyiv and about a dozen other regions.

The BBC noted that, according to the United Nations, more civilians had been killed in Ukraine by August of this year than in all of 2025. Zelensky called on Ukraine's partners to follow up with "concrete action through new defence packages." Interceptor missiles are in short supply worldwide, the BBC said, which leaves Ukraine with little ability to stop incoming ballistic missiles.