A Russian strike on two passenger buses in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 33 people and wounded 18 on Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026, Ukrainian officials said.
The toll rose through the day. Donetsk regional military administration head Vadym Filashkin first reported 12 dead, then 30 dead and 18 wounded, the Kyiv Post reported. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service later put the number of dead at 33, Meduza reported. The figures could not be independently verified and may change.
The regional prosecutor’s office said the strike likely involved a guided aerial bomb, also called a glide bomb, according to Meduza. Police also said the buses were hit by a glide bomb, Al Jazeera reported. Kramatorsk is about 15 kilometres from the front line.
Filashkin said in a Telegram post that “the Russians are deliberately targeting civilians.” He also said Russia “consciously disregards all conceivable rules of warfare and norms of international humanitarian law,” the Kyiv Post reported.
The Kramatorsk City Council called the attack “yet another horrific crime” by the Russian army and said there were no military targets at the site, Al Jazeera reported. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the site as a bus stop.
Moscow had not commented on the strike when those reports were published. Russia denies targeting civilians, although its forces have repeatedly hit Ukrainian cities and towns since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Filashkin ordered public transport suspended in Kramatorsk and nearby Sloviansk and urged residents of the Donetsk region to move to safer parts of Ukraine.
Kramatorsk is one of the main Donetsk cities Russia has not captured. It has served as a logistics and supply hub for Ukraine’s military and forms part of the so-called fortress belt that Ukrainian troops are defending. Russian forces have moved close to its eastern edge, Al Jazeera reported. Meduza noted that Russian authorities describe the capture or voluntary surrender of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk as a mandatory condition for ending the war.
The bus strike came a day after a Russian missile hit a residential building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region. Governor Vyacheslav Chaus said that attack had killed 22 people, including five children. Zelenskyy said a cruise missile hit the building directly, Al Jazeera reported.
Canada has a direct stake in the war. According to Statistics Canada’s 2021 census, more than 1.2 million people in Canada reported Ukrainian origin, one of the largest Ukrainian communities outside Ukraine. Canada also leads the NATO multinational brigade in Latvia. Canada News Media had not found a statement from the Canadian government on the Kramatorsk strike at the time of writing.
Strikes on civilian targets have marked earlier stages of the war. In September 2024, Russian missiles hit a military training facility and a hospital in Poltava, killing at least 50 people.
Ukrainian and Russian officials are expected to keep trading claims as investigators document the Kramatorsk site. Casualty figures from both sides in this war are difficult to confirm independently.
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Via Al Jazeera, the Kyiv Post and Meduza.
