A Russian guided bomb detonated next to a bus stop in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing 30 people and injuring at least 18, authorities said Thursday. The explosion occurred in the morning as several passenger‑filled public buses were waiting, prompting a suspension of all local public transport. City officials said the rescue effort was hampered by subsequent Russian drone attacks.
The strike is part of a pre‑winter wave of attacks across Ukraine. A day earlier, Russian missile strikes hit the northern town of Pryluky, where the death toll has risen to 22, including five children, and at least 54 people were wounded. Rescue teams were still combing rubble from a struck residential building, while survivors were forced to sleep in heavily damaged apartments.
In response, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband condemned the Pryluky attack during a visit to Ukraine, calling the targeting of civilians a war crime and announcing new sanctions on Russian oil companies and military supply chains. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia would likely increase daily missile and drone attacks as winter approaches and appealed for additional NATO defence support. Ukraine’s energy company DTEK reported emergency power outages ordered by the national grid operator Ukrenergo, separate from scheduled rolling blackouts.
Other developments include Kyiv police defusing two unexploded ballistic missile warheads near residential buildings and Russian drones striking Kyiv’s Obolonskyi and Desnianskyi districts, killing four people and injuring 12, including children. Yandex said a data centre in the western Ryazan region was damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack, potentially disrupting online services. Ukraine also claimed to have struck a large oil refinery complex in Salavat, east of Moscow, though the claim could not be independently verified. Lithuania deployed about 100 additional soldiers to secure its border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, while Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan proposed measures to protect civilian shipping in the Black Sea.
