The frontline city of Kramatorsk was shattered by a Russian glide‑bomb attack early Thursday, as rescue officials confirmed that thirty‑three civilians lost their lives and eighteen others sustained injuries when two buses were hit.
Glide bombs, fitted with winglets that allow them to glide toward their targets, have been used increasingly by Moscow on Ukrainian cities. In August alone Kramatorsk was targeted by as many as nine glide bombs in one day.
The assault hit buses carrying passengers, with images from local prosecutors showing the metal shell ablaze and black smoke billowing amid scattered debris.
Kramatorsk, along with the nearby city of Slovyansk, forms part of a “fortress belt” that Russia seeks to capture as part of its claim to the industrial Donbas region.
The strike is the latest in a surge of attacks that has seen civilian deaths in Ukraine rise above the total recorded in all of 2025, according to UN figures.
One particularly devastating raid earlier this week destroyed a five‑storey block of flats in Pryluky, east of Kyiv, killing twenty‑two people, including five children – three of them just one year old – inflaming international concern.
Donetsk regional head Vadym Filashkin appealed for residents to flee to safer parts of Ukraine and ordered a halt to all public transport services for safety, citing the lack of military targets at the buses.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky expressed his condolences to the families and urged partner states to deliver “concrete action through new defence packages” to shield civilians from these attacks.
Russia, which continues to justify its full‑scale invasion by citing the “liberation” and protection of the Russian‑speaking Donbas, now seeks to secure the remaining twenty per cent of Donetsk still under Ukrainian control.
