A Russian guided bomb exploded beside passenger-filled public buses in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk, killing 30 people and wounding at least 18 more, authorities said Thursday.
The strike hit next to a bus stop during the morning in Kramatorsk, which lies in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, and public transport in the area was suspended as a result.
“There is no doubt that Russia is cynically targeting civilians,” Oleksandr Honcharenko, head of the city’s military administration, said, adding that the rescue effort had been hampered by subsequent Russian attacks using small drones.
The bombing came amid an intensive pre-winter wave of attacks across Ukraine, with power cuts deepening in the capital, Kyiv.
A day earlier, deadly missile strikes hit the northern Ukrainian town of Pryluky, where the death toll has now risen to 22, including five children.
At least 54 people were wounded in that attack, and rescuers were still searching the rubble of a residential building struck by a Russian missile.
Some survivors had to sleep in heavily damaged apartments because they couldn't find anywhere else to sleep. Rescue dogs continued a nearby search for residents who have not yet been accounted for, while heavy debris was removed from the cratered section of the building.
Map of Kramatorsk:
UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband condemned the Pryluky attack during a visit to Ukraine on Thursday, and branded Russian president Vladimir Putin’s strategy “evil”.
“When we come to the site of this appalling atrocity, the killing of civilians, 22 civilians, five children, babies, there can be no clearer sign of Putin’s evil intent and evil strategy in this conflict,” he said.
“Because I heard from the governor that the vast, vast majority of people killed in this region, affected in this region, are civilians, the buildings targeted are civilian.
“And we know what international law says about this, that when you target civilians, it is war crimes, and that is the evidence that I see here.”
Mr Miliband also announced new sanctions on Russia targeting oil companies, shadow fleet tankers and military supply chains during his trip.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia will likely escalate daily missile and drone attacks as winter approaches. He appealed for additional defence support from Nato countries.
“It is important that support in words takes concrete form in new packages for Ukraine’s defence," he wrote in an online post. “Supplies of anti-ballistic capabilities, ammunition for our combat aircraft and investments in interceptors, all of this is directly helping save lives every day.”
In Kyiv, Ukraine’s energy company DTEK said the national grid operator Ukrenergo had ordered emergency power outages.
DTEK explained that these emergency cuts are separate from the regular, rolling outages scheduled across the country and would not be applied during those shutdowns.
A public awareness campaign restarted this month has urged families to prepare emergency kits, store drinking water and maintain off-grid power sources ahead of expected prolonged winter blackouts, as Moscow keeps up the intensity of its attacks.
Kyiv police said bomb disposal specialists had defused two more unexploded ballistic missile warheads, each weighing about half a ton, after they landed near residential buildings.
Late Wednesday, Russian drones struck Kyiv's Obolonskyi and Desnianskyi districts, killing four people and injuring 12, including four children, police said.
Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than 4 1/2 years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Russian technology giant Yandex said one of its data centres in the western Ryazan region was damaged in a Ukrainian drone attack.
The site was taken offline, and Yandex said the attack could lead to online service disruption.
Also Thursday, Ukraine said its forces struck a large oil refinery complex in the city of Salavat, some 1,200km (about 750 miles) east of Moscow.
Ukraine’s General Staff described the complex as one of Russia’s largest oil refining and petrochemical facilities. The claim could not be independently verified.
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan said his government had presented proposals to both Russia and Ukraine aimed at protecting civilian shipping in the Black Sea.
He also warned that commercial trade and grain exports could be disrupted by escalating military offensives.
Separately, Lithuania has deployed about 100 additional soldiers to help secure its border with Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordering the Nato member, the Baltic country’s defence minister, Robertas Kaunas, said.
Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, separated from mainland Russia, and remains a major security concern for Nato’s eastern flank.
Kaunas said both the duration of the deployment and the number of troops could be adjusted depending on changing security conditions.
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