Russian bomb strike near Kramatorsk buses kills at least 30

A Russian guided bomb exploded beside two buses filled with passengers in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk on Thursday, killing at least 30 people and wounding at least 18, officials said. The attack came a day after a missile struck a residential building in northern Ukraine, killing 22.

The bomb hit near a bus stop in Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region, prompting officials to suspend public transport in the area. Video released by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry showed bodies on a debris-strewn road near the burned wreckage of vehicles.

“There is no doubt that Russia is cynically targeting civilians,” said Oleksandr Honcharenko, head of the city’s military administration. He said subsequent attacks by small Russian drones hampered rescue crews. Responding to the Kramatorsk attack, Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin accused Russia of deliberately trying to “kill as many people as possible,” CBS News reported. Three more people were killed by Russian shelling in neighboring villages, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Wednesday’s strike in Pryluky hit a five-story residential building. NPR reported that five children were among the 22 people killed and at least 54 people were wounded. Rescuers searched the rubble, while some survivors slept in badly damaged apartments because they had nowhere else to go.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Pryluky on Thursday and called for more defense support. “It is important that support in words takes concrete form in new packages for Ukraine’s defense,” he wrote online. In audio clips responding to journalists’ questions Thursday evening, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian negotiators would meet in the United States with President Donald Trump’s representatives Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff for two days beginning Friday. They would discuss strengthening Ukraine’s air defenses, among other issues, NPR reported.

In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that he saw no “clear path” to a peaceful resolution of the war, which began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russia denies targeting civilians. Its foreign ministry recently urged foreign nationals and diplomats to leave Kyiv, warning of sustained strikes against what it called military targets in Ukrainian cities, CBS News reported.

Attacks also strained Kyiv. Energy company DTEK said the national grid operator had ordered emergency outages in the capital. Kyiv police said Russian drones struck two districts late Wednesday, killing four people and injuring 12, including four children. Police also reported defusing two unexploded ballistic missile warheads near residential buildings, according to NPR.

Ukraine, meanwhile, reported strikes deep inside Russia. Its military said it had hit an oil refinery in Omsk, Siberia, that supplied fuel to Russian forces, according to CBS News. NPR reported that the independent Russian outlet Astra said the Omsk refinery was on fire, but there was no official confirmation. NPR also reported that Ukraine claimed to have struck a separate oil-refining complex in Salavat; that claim could not be independently verified.

Russian technology company Yandex said a Ukrainian drone attack damaged one of its data centers in the Ryazan region and took it offline, NPR reported. CBS News reported that Yandex was working to restore equipment after a fire forced it to suspend operations at the site and disrupted some of its cloud services.