At least 30 people were killed when a Russian bomb struck two buses in the Ukrainian front-line city of Kramatorsk on Thursday, local officials said, as Moscow’s intensifying attacks grow ever more deadly.
Another 18 people were wounded when the bomb hit a street in the city at 10 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET), Ukraine’s National Police said in a statement.
Kramatorsk’s regional governor, Vadym Filashkin, accused Russia of deliberately targeting civilians, sharing images of a charred bus wreckage and bodies and body parts on the road next to it. Filashkin said he was shutting down public transport in the city and neighboring Sloviansk in light of “the sharp deterioration of the security situation.”
The bloody aftermath left debris and body parts strewn across a road in the eastern city. Ukrainian National Police
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement on his social media channels that Russia struck “an ordinary public transport stop” in Kramatorsk with an aerial bomb.
In a later post, he said doctors were fighting to save the lives of those injured and “some of those killed have still not been identified because of the severity of their injuries.”
Kramatorsk is close to the active front line and part of Ukraine’s industrial Donbass region, which has been central to Russian President Vladimir Putin war plans.
Civilian casualties have surged as Russia intensifies attacks across Ukraine, which is running low on air defense munitions.
Zelenskyy said in a social media post that it was important the country received “new packages for Ukraine’s defense” promised by its allies. “Supplies of anti-ballistic capabilities, ammunition for our combat aircraft and investments in interceptors — all of this is directly helping save lives every day,” he added.
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Russian bombs hit Ukrainian public buses
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His comments came as Ukraine has suffered from an uptick in daytime attacks in recent weeks, creating a round-the-clock threat to civilians.
Thursday’s strike came a day after a missile strike on a residential building in the north of the country killed 22 people, including five children.
Zelenskyy visited the site of that attack Thursday, saying in a Telegram post: “Over a hundred residential buildings were damaged, as well as educational institutions, kindergartens, shops, enterprises, and infrastructure that supports normal life in the city.”
Moscow has repeatedly denied that it deliberately targets civilians in Ukraine.
Elsewhere, Reuters reported Zelenskyy as saying that Ukrainian negotiators will visit the United States for talks Friday and Saturday.
Urging President Donald Trump to step up pressure on Russia, he said: “One cannot, on the one hand, negotiate with the Russians about future economic projects, whilst on the other hand say that we find ourselves in some sort of… diplomatic stalemate.”