At least 33 people were killed when a Russian bomb struck the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, authorities said, calling the attack a deliberate assault on civilians in a strategic stronghold Moscow has sought to capture.
The strike, one of the year’s deadliest single attacks, also wounded 18 people. It hit a street where police said two city buses were in service at the time.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky said the blast occurred at a bus stop.
Photographs released by police showed bodies lying amid rubble in the roadway and the burned-out remains of what appeared to be a bus.
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Russia says it does not target civilians, but its forces have repeatedly bombarded Ukrainian cities, towns and other locations since launching their full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Local officials say Moscow has intensified drone and guided-bomb attacks on Kramatorsk and other cities forming Ukraine’s “fortress belt”, the backbone of its defences in the Donetsk region.
Russia has insisted that Ukraine surrender the remaining part of the region under Kyiv’s control as a condition for ending the war, a demand Ukraine rejects. Moscow’s territorial advances there have slowed sharply this year.
Mr Filashkin said he had instructed authorities in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, another major city in the fortress belt, to suspend public transport, saying “we have no right to risk” residents’ lives.
Separately, three people were killed and 14 wounded in drone strikes on Kyiv in the morning, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Russian forces have launched repeated waves of attacks on the capital as Ukraine faces a shortage of air-defence systems.
The strikes followed a day after a major Russian air assault killed dozens of people across Ukraine, with the country’s power grid the main target.
