KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Dozens of people were killed in a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on October 8, according to local authorities, a day after another deadly barrage killed at least 25 people across Ukraine.
The death toll from the Kramatorsk attack has risen to 33, with 18 others wounded, according to the latest reports from regional authorities and the prosecutor’s office.
Images taken by RFE/RL correspondent Serhiy Horbatenko, who visited the site shortly after the attack, showed a passenger bus burned out by the strike, with bodies strewn around the scene.
The Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office said the Russian strike hit two buses that were carrying passengers at the time of the attack.
The prosecutor’s office said Russian forces likely used guided bombs to strike the vehicles.
The strike came a day after at least 25 people nationwide, including two in the capital Kyiv, were reported killed in the October 7 barrage.
The bombardment was part of near-daily attacks that have steadily increased in frequency and ferocity as the Kremlin struggles on the battlefield front line.
In Pryluky, about 150 kilometers east of Kyiv, rescuers searched through the rubble of a destroyed apartment building in northern Ukraine for survivors following a Russian missile attack on October 7 that killed 22 people, including five children.
Russian forces “destroyed” a residential building “as a birthday ‘gift’ to Putin,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post to X, calling it one of the “most vile” attacks in recent memory. He noted that the October 7 attacks across Ukraine occurred on the birthday of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At least 10 other such buildings were damaged elsewhere, along with Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, one of Moscow’s other “key targets,” he said.
“The fire was right in front of my eyes. There were explosions. I was screaming in my apartment. Extremely scary. I can’t describe it,” one woman, who gave her name as Lidiya, told Current Time at the scene in Pryluky.
“So many people have died. I knew everyone here,” she added, holding back tears.
With a fifth wartime winter approaching, Russian strikes on Ukraine have become a daily occurrence.
Moscow has previously sought to pressure Kyiv into accepting its hard-line demands by attacking the country’s energy infrastructure and leaving thousands without heat or electricity amid freezing temperatures.
Since this year, however, Kyiv has increasingly responded to Russian attacks with a campaign of long-range strikes targeting military and energy sites inside Russia and middle-range strikes targeting its key logistics in Ukraine’s occupied eastern and southern regions.
According to monitoring Telegram channels, Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex data center in Russia’s Ryazan region on October 8, causing a fire and forcing the company to suspend operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers.
Yandex, Russia’s leading AI and technology company, confirmed the attack on its Sasovo hub, one of its five large data centers. It said it was restoring affected services.
Ukrainian forces also struck the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery and petrochemical complex in Bashkortostan on the same day, sparking a fire, according to Ukraine’s military.
Russian air defenses intercepted and destroyed 399 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on October 8.
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